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FOUNDED  BY  JOHM  D.  ROCKEFELI-ER 


A  Consideration  of  Prayer  from  the  Standpoint 
of  Social  Psychology 


A  DISSERTATION 

Submitted  to  the  Facalty  of  the  Graduate  School  of  Arts  and  Literature 

in  Candidacy  for  the  Degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy 

(Department  of  Philosophy) 


BV 


ANNA  LOUISE  STRONG 


CHICAGO 
1908 


Cbe  'mnivcrsitB  of  Cbtcago 

FOUNDED  BV  JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLER 


A  Consideration  of  Prayer  from  the  Standpoint 
of  Social  Psychology 


A  DISSERTATION 

Submitted  to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate  School  o(  Arts  and  Literature 

in  Candidacy  for  the  Degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy 

(Department  of  Philosophy) 


BY 

ANNA  LOUISE  STRONG 


K 


CHICAGO 

1908 


NOTE 

The  writer  wishes  to  express  her  gratitude  to  Pro- 
fessors Tufts  and  Mead,  and  Ur.  Ames,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago:  to  Dr.  Ames  for  the  material 
which  originally  suggested  the  problem;  to  Professor 
Mead  for  the  course  in  which  the  point  of  view 
here  assumed  was  first  outlined;  and  to  Professor 
Tufts  for  his  unfailingly  sympathetic  aid  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  final  form  of  the  thesis  and  its 
preparation  for  the  press. 


^  QO  ',"^2 


A  CONSIDERATION  OF  PRAYER  FROM  THE 
STANDPOINT  OF  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

r.     Introduction.      The    Essentially    Social 

Character  of  the  Self 9 

The  self  as  a  construct  in  consciousness.  How  self-con- 
sciousness is  attained.  The  "Imaginative  Social  Process," — 
in  the  child  as  type  of  the  total  process  of  reflection,  in  the 
adult  as  type  of  the  initial  stage  of  reflection,  that  of  "emo- 
tional evaluation.''  A  difference  of  degree,  not  of  kind.  The 
question  of  objective  reference  stated   in  general. 

Prayer  as  a  form  of  the  "Imaginative  Social  Process,"  i. 
e.,  a  means  for  the  construction  of  a  self.  The  completely 
social  type  of  prayor  arising  through  the  gradual  discrimina- 
tion in  consciousness  between  personal  and  non-personal 
means  and  ends.  The  two  tendencies  in  the  completely  so- 
cial type.  Tiie  contemplative  or  "aesthetic."  The  practical 
or  "ethical." 

11.     Undiscriminating  Forms  of  Prayer.     The 

Child  and  the  Primitive  Man 25 

The  undiscriminating  nature  of  the  immature  conscious- 
ness :  no  clear  distinction  of  personal  and  uou-personal.  re- 
ligious and  non-religious  needs.  The  beginnings  of  the  "sci- 
entific" discrimination,  based  on  efliciency.  The  ethical  dis- 
crimination, based  on  the  distinction  between  the  needs  of  a 
partial  self  and  those  of  the  widest  "social"  self.  The  needs 
of  the  partial  self  satisfied  either  by  magic  as  vs.  religion, 
or  by  a  non-ethical  polytheism. 

TIT.    Intermediate  Types.    The  Growth  of  Dis- 
crimination        45 

Prayers  in  whieh  so-called  "objective"  results  are  sought, 
and  attained  indirectly,  through  social  means  not  explicitly 
recognizetl  as  such,  by  (1)   the  establishment  of  a  more  con- 


b  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PKAYEE 

fident  self.  (2-)  a  different  interpretation  of  the  environment, 
(3)  various  specific  forms  of  subconscious  activity.  Prayers 
for  the  cure  of  disease. 

IV.  The  Completely  Social  Type  of  Prayer. 

Its   General  Characteristics 61 

Prayer  is  a  social  relation  between  two  selves  arising 
simultaneously  in  consciousness,  and  has  as  end  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  wider  self.  The  fundamentally  social  nature 
of  consciousness,  illustrated  by  the  demand  for  strengthening 
sympathy,  self-expression,  ethical  criteria. 

V.  The  Two  Tendencies  in  the  Completely 

Social    Type.      The    Contemplative    or 

'  *  Aesthetic  "    71 

The  two  tendencies  in  every  social  act — the  aesthetic  and 
the  practical,  i.  e..  the  tendency  to  rest  in  the  experience 
itself  and  the  tendency  to  pass  as  quickly  as  possible  into 
action.  The  social  nature  of  the  aesthetic  satisfaction. 
Einfuh]un(/s-theorif.  Nirvana,  the  mysti(  trance ;  the  ex- 
treme at  which  prayer  passes  first  into  aesthetic  contempla- 
tion and  thence  into  unconsciousness.  Less  extreme  ex- 
amples of  this  tendency.  Ritualistic  Prayer.  The  general 
psychological  characteristics  of  this  form :  surrender  of  the 
self  of  immediate  desire  and  the  consequent  attainment  of 
peace  through  reliance  on  a  specific  organization  of  sub- 
conscious activities. 

VI.  The  Two  Tendencies  in  the  Completely 

Social  Type.     The  Practical  or  ''Eth- 
ical"       93 

The  tendency  in  every  social  act  to  pass  as  quiclcly  as  pos- 
sible into  action.  The  limiting  of  the  function  of  prayer  to 
the  production  of  a  strictly  ethical  result.  The  extreme  at 
which  prayer  passes  first  into  moral  action  and  thence  into 
habitual,  i.  e.,  unconscious  activity.  Less  extreme  examples 
of  this  tendency.  Prayers  for  conversion.  Moral  reinforce- 
ment through  the  establishment  of  a  wider,  more  truly 
ethical   self.      Indirect   attainment   of   this  end   through   the 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PRAYER  / 

idea  of  a  mighty  ally.  Diivct  increase  of  strength  through 
unification  of  aim.  and  reliance  on  the  more  regularly  eflS- 
cient  subconscious  activities. 

VII.    The  Type  of  Reality  and  the  Objective 

Reference  Involved  in  Prayer 110 

The  "Personal  Idea"  as  ultimate  social  reality.  The  con- 
ditions under  which  the  subject-object  distinction  arises  and 
the  nature  of  the  objective  reference.  The  "object"  as  neces- 
sary conditioning  means  to  a  required  end.  Extent  to  which 
a  dynamic  unity  may  be  posited  of  the  "object"  in  prayer. 


Prayer  from  the  Standpoint  of  Social  Psychology 


THE    ESSENTIALLY    SOCIAL    CHARACTEE    OF   THE   SELF 

In  this  discussion  of  the  psychology  of  prayer  I 
shall  use  as  point  of  view  not  the  standpoint  of 
physiological  psychology,  which  may  appropriately 
be  termed  "individual"  psychology,  but  the  stand- 
point of  the  so-called  "social  psychologj^"/  I 
shall  first  state  what  I  take  to  be  the  essential  re- 
quirements of  this  point  of  view  and  then  outline  the 
general  effects  which  it  has  on  the  psychology  of 
prayer,  before  proceeding  to  a  consideration  of  those 
effects  in  detail. 

From  the  standpoint  of  consciousness,  man  begins 
as  a  social  being;  he  does  not  acquire  society.  This 
was  not  recognized  by  some  of  the  older  ]isycholo- 
gists,  according  to  whom  the  child  first  acquired  a 
perception  and  knowledge  of  the  world  around  him, 
and  then,  discerning  certain  objects  in  that  world 
which  did  not  seem  to  come  under  the  usual  Inws  of 
the  place,  attributed  personality  to  them.     Anthro- 


'  This  view  of  "social  psychology"  is  drawn  partly  from  Cooley's 
"Human  Natiiro  and  tlio  Social  Order."  and  finds  most  of  its  nltiraate 
foundations  in  the  published  works  of  Professors  Dewey.  Baldwin, 
and  occasional  passaces  in  .Tames,  together  with  unpublished  lec- 
tures by  Professor  Mead. 


10  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYEK 

pologists,  following  this  view,  deduced  man's  re- 
ligion from  primitive  attempts  to  solve  various  theo- 
retical problems  which  were  supposed  to  cause  great 
perplexity  to  the  mind  of  savage  man:  as  for  in- 
stance, why  certain  natural  forces  acted  irregularly, 
or  why  he  himself  could  be  in  one  place  in  his  dreams 
when  his  companions  assured  him  that  he  had  passed 
the  night  in  another  place. 

This  point  of  view  was  reasonable  as  long  as  the 
mind  was  regarded  as  a  separable  indi\ddual  sub- 
stance, capable  of  "having  states",  dowered  with 
certain  inalienable  possessions,  among  which  a  most 
important  one  was  the  craving  for  philosophic  ex- 
planation. Each  primitive  man,  then,  became  a 
Descartes,  deducing  the  universe  about  him  from  the 
one  assured  fact  of  the  existence  of  his  self,  a  self 
of  which  apparently  he  had  full  cognizance. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  self,  for  the  child  and 
for  primitive  man,  is  as  truly  a  construct  in  con- 
sciousness as  is  the  physical  world.  We  recognize 
as  much  in  our  adult  introspection,  which  assures 
us  that  we  progressively  define  ourselves  only  by 
defining  other  parts  of  the  total  content  of  con- 
sciousness. The  self,  at  least  any  ''self"  which  we 
define  and  distinguish  from  the  other  facts  of  our 
world,  is  not  something  which  "has"  consciousness, 
but  something  which  arises  in  consciousness. 

And  the  consciousness  in  which  it  arises  is  of  a 
social  type.  We  do  not  begin  with  a  consciousness 
of  a  physical   world,   and  infer  personalities;   we 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PKAYEK  11 

begin  ^dth  social  phenomena.  It  is  natural  that  this 
should  be  the  case.  For  the  point  at  which  conscious- 
ness first  arises  in  the  stream  of  unconscious  activ- 
ity is  at  the  point  of  tension,  the  place  where  the 
instincts  fail  to  meet  the  satisfaction  toward  which 
they  ])oint,  where  something  which  cannot  be  con- 
trolled by  the  immediate  reflexes,  meets  the  activity. 
This  is  most  often  produced  by  the  presence  and 
opposing  activity  of  another  person;  it  brings  up  a 
problem  and  a  problem  is  the  beginning  of  conscious- 
ness, since  it  is  the  first  place  in  the  life-process 
where  there  is  any  demand  for  it. 

From  what  we  know  of  our  adult  consciousness, 
this  conflict  first  takes  the  fonn  of  an  emotional  dis- 
turbance. It  is  a  conflict  of  ends,  that  is  to  say,  of 
differing  tendencies  towards  action.  These  ten- 
dencies can  either  of  them  be  identified  with  the 
activity  which  until  now  has  gone  on  unchecked ;  this 
fact  gives  them  the  j^eculiar  proprietary  feeling 
which  is  associated  with  an  emotion.  The  conflict 
is  not  merely  between  two  impersonal  ends,  but 
between  two  different  selves.  Out  of  this  conflict 
arises  the  self  which  is  to  be  the  real  one.  the  actu- 
alized self.  It  is  not  as  though  the  real  self  were 
there  all  along  and  chose  to  identify  itself  with  one 
of  two  alternatives;  rather,  it  comes  to  existence 
only  afterward,  and  is  the  result  of  the  conflict.  It 
is  the  beginning  of  a  self-consciousness,  arising  out 
of  a  conflict  of  activities. 

This  is  not  merely  a  conflict  which  happens  once 


12  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

for  all,  somewhere  back  in  the  life  of  primitive  man 
or  of  the  child.  Self-consciousness  is  not  attained 
at  any  given  period  in  the  history  of  either  the  race 
or  the  individual.  i^Rather,  as  activity  goes  on,  we 
are  continually  attaining  self-consciousness,  and  each 
time  it  is  the  consciousness  of  a  slightly  different 
self.  If  we  do  not  fall  back  on  the  mechanical  life  of 
habit,  if  consciousness  exists  at  all  in  us,  it  is  only 
through  this  constant  conflict,  which  takes  the  form 
of  a  conflict  of  different  selves  and  which  results  in 
another  hitherto  non-existent  self.  That  is  to  say, 
the  form  of  the  conflict  is  always  social  in  its  nature. 

This  point  must  be  insisted  on.  We  do  not  per- 
ceive the  world  because  we  have  eyes  and  ears  and 
other  instruments  of  sense-perception  plus  an  inborn 
desire  to  look  at  and  listen  to  the  world;  we  reach 
even  as  far  as  sense-perception  only  through  a 
thwarting  of  impulsive  activities  which  demands 
that  we  "sit  up  and  take  notice."  And  this  thwart- 
ing comes  about  largely  through  social  and  personal 
means. 

It  would  perhaps  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  con- 
sciousness thus  arising  is  in  any  developed  sense 
social  rather  than  physical.  But  this  much  is  evi- 
dent. The  consciousness  of  a  social  world  is  at 
least  as  early  as  the  consciousness  of  a  physical 
world.  Even  as  we  learn  gradually  to  mark  off  our 
physical  selves  from  the  |)hysical  universe,  defining 
that  universe  by  the  relation  in  which  it  stands  to  us, 
so  we  learn  to  mark  off  our  social  selves  from  the 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER  13 

social   environment   of   other   selves   or   "personal 
ideas"  that  threaten  to  affect  us. 

Not  only  is  the  social  problem  at  least  as  early 
as  the  physical  problem,  but  it  receives,  in  the  earlieii 
stages  of  development,  a  much  stronger  emphasis. 
The  more  important  problems  and  the  more  import- 
ant emotional  responses  are  called  forth  by  the  pres- 
ence of  persons.  Hence  the  social  world  stays  per-| 
sistentlv  and  forcefullv  in  consciousness.  We  ob-i 
serve  the  signs  of  this  in  the  mythological  expres- 
sion of  the  world  of  primitive  men.  Science  and 
the  scientific  temper  is  a  very  late  development  and 
there  are  even  now  few  people  for  whom  it  possesses 
the  importance  of  the  world  of  personal  relations. 
And  however  elaborate  may  be  the  systems  of  sym- 
bols which  we  finally  employ  in  complex  activities, 
however  abstractly  scientific  may  become  the  ideas 
which  supersede  the  more  concrete,  less  analyzed 
personal  ideas  in  the  working  out  of  a  problem,  the 
beginning  of  that  problem  is  always  in  a  stage  of 
emotional  tension,  which  is  in  its  nature  a  conflict 
of  selves.  The  more  intense  the  problem,  the  more 
we  realize  the  fact  that  the  ideas  contained  in  it  are 
]iersonal  ideas.  The  difference  between  myself  as 
going  into  the  next  room  and  myself  as  staying 
here  is  not  an  enormous  one,  though  under  some 
conditions  it  might  easily  become  so.  But  the  differ- 
ence between  myself  as  scientist  and  myself  as  artist 
is  great  enough  to  become  a  very  real  conflict  of 
selves.    All  strongly  felt  problems  pass  in  their  be- 


14  PSYCHOLOGY   OF  PEAYEE 

ginnings  through  this  stage  of  emotional  tension  and 
evaluation,  which  takes  the  form  of  an  imaginative 
social  process. 

For  the  child,  however,  the  imaginative  social 
process  is  not  only  the  type  of  emotional  evaluation, 
but  the  type  of  the  total  working  out  of  his  prob- 
lems. Difficulties  he  cannot  solve  for  himself  are 
solved  for  him  by  persons.  He  has  not  himself  that 
development  of  personality  which  would  enable  him 
to  solve  his  own  difficulties.  For  this  would  mean 
a  highly  complex  organization  of  ideas,  complex 
enough  to  enable  a  long  process  of  reflection  to  go 
on  inside  of  that  organization  without  reference  to 
the  world  outside.  Such  a  system  the  adult  devel- 
ops ;  the  abstract  symbols  of  reasoning  take  for  him 
the  place  of  the  more  concrete,  less  manageable  per- 
sonal ideas,  which  are  relegated  to  the  beginning  of 
his  problem.  But  the  child's  world  is  a  deus  ex 
machina  world;  when  things  can  go  no  further  a 
fairy  steps  in  and  sets  them  right.  This  is  no  miracle 
to  the  child;  it  is  the  natural  method  of  solution. 
Things  have  to  be  "fixed"  in  some  way;  he  does  not 
possess  a  sufficiently  organized  personality  to  fix 
them  himself ;  it  is  done  for  him  by  the  imaginative 
social  process  of  which  he  distinguishes  himself  as 
one  part.  The  difference  is. one  of  control.  The 
novelist  who  cannot  invent  a  situation  which  works 
out  its  own  inevitable  solution  is  the  novelist  who 
must  introduce  a  deus  ex  machina. 

Yet  even  here  the  process  of  solution  is  different 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  15 

in  degree  rather  than  in  kind.  The  ideas  which  for 
the  developed  consciousness  take  the  place  of  exter- 
nal persons  still  possess  traces  of  their  origin  as 
personal  ideas.  But  they  are  less  concrete  and  more 
specialized  in  function  than  the  persons  of  the  child. 
Instead  of  being  endowed,  as  is  the  fairy,  with  wings 
and  wand  and  golden  hair  and  gauzy  raiment,  and  a 
lot  of  other  perfectly  irrelevant  things,  they  have 
only  the  amount  of  content  necessary  to  the  per- 
formance of  their  function.  This  function  per- 
formed they  sink  out  of  consciousness  and  other 
ideas  take  their  place,  each  expressing  one  tendency 
in  the  total  conflict.  The  more  abstract  this  process 
is,  or,  in  other  words,  the  longer  the  process  of 
reflection  before  the  resultant  act,  the  more  refined 
and  specialized  do  these  ideas  become,  until  they  are 
mere  shadow>'  symbols  of  the  "selves"  which  once 
they  were.  When  an  idea  has  only  one  function  and 
performs  that  function  with  perfect  and  regular 
adequacy,  we  are  no  longer  conscious  of  it  as  a  per- 
sonal idea.  And  in  our  consideration  of  prayer,  we 
shall  see  how  the  social  relation,  usually  present  in 
prayer,  may,  by  the  loss  of  content  in  one  or  other 
of  the  selves  involved,  be  resolved  into  an  aesthetic 
satisfaction  or  a  moral  action,  which,  while  social  in 
its  origin,  is  no  longer  social  for  consciousness. 

We  have  seen  that  when  the  unity  of  unconscious 
activity  is  broken  up  by  a  problem  of  some  kind,  the 
first  result  is  an  emotional  disturbance.  This  dis- 
turbance is  social  in  nature,  being  a  conflict  of  dif- 


16  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYEE 

ferent  selves,  or  personal  ideas.  There  follows  the 
process  of  readjustment,  of  solution.  This,  for  the 
undeveloped  personality,  takes  place  also  in  terms  of 
personal  ideas.  Not  that  the  child's  consciousness 
is  in  the  last  analysis  more  social  than  the  adult's. 
Both  are  occupied  with  the  mechanics  of  the  con- 
struction of  selves.  But  for  the  adult  the  process 
is  more  complex.  The  immature  consciousness  is 
one  in  which  the  process  of  reflection  stops  short  of 
complete  adjustment,  and  hence  gives  mentally  to 
the  elements  of  its  world  the  concrete  f  onn  of  selves, 
in  so  far  as  they  are  isolated  elements.  For  in  so 
far  as  any  object  or  phase  of  consciousness  is  not 
made  part  of  some  larger  systematic  whole,  it  tends 
to  take  on  a  personal  form,  the  form  of  a  self. 

We  begin  here  to  see  the  reason  why  the  imag- 
inative social  process  is,  as  we  have  said,  for  chil- 
dren the  form  of  the  total  process  of  solution,  while 
for  adults  it  is  the  form  taken  by  a  problem  in  its 
initial  statement  and  emotional  evaluation.  For  the 
mature  consciousness  goes  from  this  stage  to  the 
stage  of  reflection,  and  in  reflection  the  elements 
are  no  longer  isolated  contents  and  hence  selves,  but 
are  organized  as  parts  of  a  larger  systematic  whole. 
This  merely  means  that  they  are  under  better  con- 
trol. The  whole  of  which  they  are  parts  is  still  a 
resultant  act  which  gets  its  complete  reality  in  per- 
sonal form,  that  is  to  say,  in  a  self.  But  a  part  is 
not  given  mentally  the  value  of  a  self.    It  is  merely 


PSYCHOLOGV   OF   PRAYER  17 

a  means  with  a  defiintely  marked  fimction.  The 
])roces.s  of  abstraction  has  begun. 

From  this  point  on  in  the  solution  of  tlie  problem, 
we  part  company  with  personal  ideas,  definitely  rec- 
ognized as  such.  What  follows  is  a  process  of  the 
type  of  reasoning,  in  which  systems  of  ideas  and 
habits  cany  on  the  problem  to  its  ultimate  solu- 
tion. 

Yet,  even  in  this  case,  the  process  of  solution 
goes  on  under  a  social  form.  Thinking,  even  ab- 
stract thinking,  is  in  its  very  nature  a  conversation. 
Most  of  our  concepts  of  abstract  thought  are  de- 
pendent on  language  symbols.  Until  we  take  the 
trouble  to  carry  on  a  careful  introspection,  we  are 
largely  unaware  of  the  extent  to  which  we  use  this 
form  of  imagery.  "The  imaginary  dialogue  passes 
beyond  the  thinking  aloud  of  little  children  into 
something  more  elaborate,  reticent  and  sophisticated, 
but  it  never  ceases."  "The  mind  lives  in  perpetual 
conversation. ' '  ^ 

With  further  abstraction  the  detiniteness  even  of 
the  word-imagery  disappears.  In  a  field  with  which 
the  reasoner  is  familiar  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to 
go  through  even  so  long  a  process  as  is  employed 
in  the  complete  conversation  setting  forth  both  sides 
of  the  argument.  The  beginning  of  a  sentence  is  all 
the  task  allowed  to  one  of  the  couflicting  selves,  be- 
fore the  answer  is  flashed  back  from  the  other.  These 


'  Coolo.v.  "Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order,"  p.  52. 


18  PSYCHOLOGY   OF  PKAYEE 

selves  become  the  most  shadowy  things  possible,  the 
correlates  of  imperceptible  articulatory  disturbances. 
But  as  long  as  the  reasoning  remains  reasoning,  it 
has  the  social  form,  however  attenuated  the  social 
content  may  become. 

The  end  finally  reached  by  this  conflict  is  a  solu- 
tion expressed  in  an  act.  And  action  again  is  def- 
initely social  in  nature.  That  is,  it  is  the  action  of 
a  self,  and  of  a  particular  self,  a  different  self  from 
the  selves  that  have  been  in  conflict.  It  is  a  new  self, 
the  resultant  of  the  others.  For  it  has  become  the 
actualized  self  as  over  against  the  possible  ideational 
selves.  We  think  of  it  as  our  own  real  self;  we 
even  read  it  back  into  the  struggle  and  think  of  it  as 
deciding  the  issue,  because  it  appeared  in  the  deci- 
sion. 

These  final  processes  are  not,  however,  consciously 
social.  Yet  the  difference  is  one  of  degree,  not  of 
kind.  The  problem  of  the  adult  is  capable  of  longer 
reflective  treatment  and  hence  of  a  more  symbolic 
and  abstract  handling.  For  him  the  imaginative  so- 
cial process  remains  only  as  the  type  of  emotional 
evaluation,  that  is,  of  the  beginning  and  definition 
of  his  problem. 

Yet  even  with  the  adult,  there  are  relatively  few 
problems  which  run  through  this  entire  gamut:  dis- 
turbance, emotional  evaluation,  reflection,  act.  This 
is  the  type  of  the  complete  process  of  solution,  but 
there  are  many  short  cuts  in  mental  life.  The  emo- 
tional   evaluation    is    often    the    only    evaluation 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER  19 

reached;  action  may  follow  quickly  enough  to  make 
any  introspective  search  for  an  intermediate  proc- 
ess of  reflection  quite  gratuitous.  This  is  the  type 
of  conflict  which  is  given  mentally  the  value  of  a 
conflict  of  selves.  It  may  still  l)e  compared,  if  we 
so  desire,  with  the  type  of  reasoning  of  the  imma- 
ture mind.  But  there  is  this  difference  with  the 
adult:  he  does  not  use  this  imaginative  social  proc- 
ess, this  emotional  evaluation,  for  all  of  his  prob- 
lems, as  does  the  child.  Greater  discrimination  pre- 
vails. All  problems  of  personal  relations  are  solved 
by  this  imaginative  social  process,  followed  or  not, 
as  the  case  may  be,  by  the  logical  process  of  re- 
flection. 

The  question  then  remains :  What  part  of  the  to- 
tal situation  in  consciousness  is  set  apart  as  "ob- 
ject" and  under  what  conditions  is  it  so  objectified? 
And,  secondly,  under  what  conditions  is  the  "object" 
defined  for  consciousness  as  a  self?  In  answer  to 
the  first  of  these  questions  I  shall  refer  especially  to 
Dr.  Stuart's  article  in  Dewey's  "Studies  in  Logical 
Theory,"  assuming  with  Cooley  that  when  the  dis- 
tinction of  subject  and  object  arises,  that  which  we 
call  subject  is  "some  form  of  purposeful  activity." 
As  long  as  "no  conflict  develops  between  motor  re- 
sponses prompted  by  dift'erent  parts  or  aspects  of 
the  same  situation",  consciousness  "will  not  present 
the  distinction  of  objective  and  subjective".  But 
as  soon  as  this  conflict  arises,  it  takes  the  form  of  a 


20  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

tension  between  a  purposeful  activity  and  certain 
conditioning  means.  Neither  the  activity  nor  the 
means  is  at  first  fully  defined;  the  process  of  solu- 
tion is  a  process  in  which  they  mutually  define  each 
other.  The  purposeful  activity  is,  however,  felt 
throughout  as  subject;  the  conditioning  means  as 
object.  The  latter  must  be  regarded  both  as  the  ob- 
stacle which  interrupts  the  course  of  the  activity, 
and  as  the  means  through  which  the  activity  must 
reach  its  end.    It  is  the  one  because  it  is  the  other. 

When,  then,  has  this  object  a  social  character! 
Under  what  conditions  does  it  take  on  the  charac- 
teristics of  selfhood?  We  have  already  seen  that  in 
so  far  as  any  object  in  consciousness  is  not  made 
part  of  a  larger  system,  it  tends  to  take  on  a  per- 
sonal form.  That  is,  any  concrete  whole,  any  object 
which  cannot  be  resolved  into  its  relations  with  other 
parts  of  consciousness,  is  given  mentally  the  form 
of  a  self.  Some  relations  with  those  other  objects 
it  must  have,  else  it  could  not  appear  in  conscious- 
ness at  all.  But  a  self  is  not  merely  a  part  in  a  sys- 
tem ;  it  is  to  some  extent  an  isolated  element,  due  to 
a  lack  of  complete  adjustment  in  consciousness. 
Complete  adjustment  depersonalizes  the  world; 
moreover,  complete  adjustment  passes  over  very 
quickly  into  unconsciousness.  But  there  are  always 
new  problems,  demanding  new  emotional  evalua- 
tions, new  conflicts  of  selves;  thus  it  is  that  con- 
sciousness goes  on. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  21 

"  Prayer  is  a  form  of  this  imagiuative  social  process 
which  we  have  said  was  the  type  of  solution  for  all 
the  problems  of  the  child,  and  the  tyjie  of  emotional 
evaluation  for  the  problems  of  the  adult.  Prayer  is 
the  direct  interaction  of  two  selves,  or  "personal 
idea.-^,"  arisins:  simultaneouslv  in  consciousness  as 
the  result  of  a  tension.  The  end  sought  and  at- 
tained is  the  establishment  of  a  wider  self.  One  of 
these  selves  or  personal  ideas  is  the  nie,  or  self  of 
immediate  purpose  and  desire;  the  other  is  objecti- 
fied as  alter.  The  alter  is,  as  object,  the  necessary 
means  to  the  desired  end,  and  this  end  is  always  an- 
other self,  differing  both  from  the  me  and  the  alter, 
and  varj^ing  infinitely  as  the  particular  problem 
varies.  The  alter  is,  as  personal  object,  an  isolated 
element,  not  yet  a  part  of  an  effectively  systema- 
tized whole.  The  alters  are  not  all  the  same  alter; 
neither  are  the  me's  the  same  me. 

In  children's  prayers,  primitive  prayers,  and  a 
small  percentage  of  the  prayers  occurring  among 
adults,  no  distinction  is  maintained  between  per- 
sonal and  impersonal  means  and  ends.  The  growth 
of  this  distinction  marks  a  stage  in  the  discrimina- 
tion of  the  use  of  prayer.  And  this  discrimination 
may  take  place  in  either  or  both  of  two  ways.  The 
use  of  prayer  in  certain  fields  may  cease  because  it 
is  not  found  to  ''work",  or  because  there  is  a  gradu- 
ally growing  sense  of  shame  in  connection  with  such 
a  use.    These  two  methods  of  discrimination  we  shall 

call  the  scientific  and  the  ethical. 


22  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

The  child  and  the  primitive  man  do  not  make  such 
distinctions.  The  prayers  they  use  are  not,  from 
our  standpoint,  the  most  effective  means  to  the  end 
desired.  Yet  even  here  they  are  perhaps  as  effi- 
cient and  direct  a  means  as  any  means  present  to  the 
consciousness  of  the  child  or  the  primitive  man. 
His  science  is  as  undiscriminating  as  his  religion; 
he  has  as  yet  no  thorough  correlation  of  means  and 
ends.  And  even  for  the  adult  the  distinction  be- 
tween personal  and  impersonal  is  not  at  all  com- 
X)letely  made.  There  are  fields  which  are  still 
claimed  for  both  concepts, — especially  the  field  of 
therapeutics.  In  fields  of  this  type  we  occupy  much 
the  same  position  as  that  occupied  by  the  primitive 
man  in  regard  to  all  his  activities.  We  try  now  one 
means,  now  another;  prayer  is  sometimes  efficient, 
sometimes  not;  and  we  do  not  know  precisely  when 
or  how  it  is  going  to  prove  efficient. 

Meantime  another  form  of  discrimination  is  con- 
stantly going  on  with  regard  to  prayer.  Certain 
needs  are  seen  to  be  the  needs  of  a  partial  self, 
others  of  the  larger,  unlimited  ''social"  self.  And 
when,  as  in  the  case  of  an  ethical  religion,  the  alter 
is  given  the  value  of  the  highest,  most  inclusive  self 
conceivable,  there  arises  a  sense  of  shame  in  the 
employment  of  a  relation  with  such  an  alter  for  the 
attainment  of  trivial  ends.  We  shall  trace  the  grad- 
ual growth  of  this  discrimination  in  the  next  section. 

The  completely  discriminating  forms  of  prayer 
vary  almost  infinitely.      But  they  may  be  conven- 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  23 

iently  classified  accord'mg  to  tlie  predominance  in 
them  of  one  or  the  other  of  the  two  tendencies  in 
every  social  relation.  One  of  these  is  a  tendency  to 
take  into  consciousness  the  largest  amount  of  social 
content  possible,  to  rest  in  the  experience  itself;  the 
second  is  the  tendency  to  hurry  as  quickly  as  possi- 
ble into  action.  The  first  of  these  we  shall  call  the 
contemplative  or  ''aesthetic"  tendency;  the  second 
the  practical  or  "ethical"  tendency. 

Prayers  of  adoration,  of  meditation,  of  joy  in  the 
greatness  of  God,  come  under  the  first  head.  "Thou, 
0  Lord,  art  from  everlasting  to  everlasting",  is  a 
form  of  adoration  in  which  the  narrower  finite  self 
finds  joy  in  the  contemi)lative  sharing  of  a  wider, 
a  mightier,  an  infinite  life.  In  prayers  of  this  type 
the  me  aims  to  lose  itself  completely  in  a  sympa- 
thetic participation  in  the  life  of  the  alter,-  in  such 
a  way  as  to  give  u])  entirely  all  thought  of  an  ac- 
tivity or  problem  of  its  own.  This  form  is  seen,  at 
its  extreme,  in  the  Buddhist  meditations,  the  aim  of 
which  is  complete  forgetfulness  of  the  finite  self. 
It  is  seen  in  less  extreme  forms  in  all  types  of  j'e- 
ligious-cTsthetic  absorption;  it  is  seen  when  the 
psalmist\  after  mentioning  with  much  lamentation 
his  own  trials,  finds  comfort  in  the  fact,  not  that 
Jehovah  will  deliver  him,  but  that  Jehovah  is  mighty 
in  Israel,  and  will  ultimately  win  the  day  in  the 
succeeding  generations.  Such  prayer  finds  its  chief 
I 

iPs.  102. 


^ 


24  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

end  in  the  prayer-state,  in  the  enlargement  of  the 
self  through  the  contemplative  sharing  of  a  wider 
life,  and  in  the  peace,  rest  and  joy  therefrom  result- 
ing. 

At  the  other  extreme  from  this  type  is  a  form  of 
prayer-relation  which  is  more  exclusively  practical. 
Prayer  is  sought  for  assistance  in  some  moral  aim, 
either  for  the  sake  of  giving  enough  incentive  to 
carry  the  action  through,  or  in  order  to  furnish  an 
ethical  test  in  the  decision  between  various  possi- 
ble lines  of  action.  Kant  illustrates  this  ethical  em- 
phasis in  prayer  when  he  declares  that  religion  is 
useful  chiefly  as  giving  divine  authority  to  the  moral 
imperative.  Just  beyond  the  position  occupied  by 
Kant  we  reach  the  extreme  at  which  prayer  ceases 
to  be  a  recognizablv  social  relation,  and  hence  ceases 
to  be  prayer  as  such.  We  reach  this  extreme,  as  we 
have  previously  suggested,  by  a  loss  of  social  con- 
tent in  the  alter.  A  similar  extreme  may  also  be 
reached  in  the  case  of  the  "aesthetic"  type  of  prayer, 
by  loss  of  content  in  the  me. 

The  prayers  of  the  typical  religious  consciousness 
vary  between  these  two  extremes.  At  the  limit  either 
of  aesthetic  contemplation  or  of  moral  action,  there 
ceases  to  be  any  mentally  recognized  relation  of 
selves,  and  we  find  accordingly  that  the  average  re- 
ligious person  will  deny  religious  content  to  these 
extremes.  Yet  they  are  merely  the  limiting  forms 
of  the  same  relationship  observed  in  prayer,  and 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PEAYER  25 

result  from  the  exclusive  emphasis  on  one  or  the 
other  of  the  two  tendencies  in  any  social  relation. 

We  have  seen,  then,  that  prayer  is  a  social  rehi- 
tion  arising  in  consciousness,  and  that  the  result  of 
this  relation  is  the  establishment  of  a  wider  self. 
We  have  seen  that  as  the  growing  consciousness 
learns  to  distinguish  between  personal  and  imper- 
sonal means  and  ends,  and  between  the  needs  of  a 
partial  self  and  those  of  a  completely  social  self, 
these  distinctions  are  a])])lied  in  the  use  of  prayer. 
And  we  have  seen,  finally,  that  even  in  the  completely 
discriminating  type  of  prayer  there  are  manifest 
two  tendencies,  leading  respectively  to  two  extremes , 
between  which  ])rayers  may  vary  infinitely.  We 
shall  proceed  to  take  up  a  general  survey  of  the  dif- 
ferent forms  of  prayei',  beginning,  in  section  two, 
with  the  undiscriminating  reactions  of  the  immature 
consciousness,  passing,  in  section  three,  to  types  of 
])rayer  in  which  gradual  discrimination  is  at  present 
taking  place,  and  finally,  in  the  remaining  sections, 
to  a  consideration  of  the  completely  social  forms  of 
prayer. 

n 

UNDISCRIMINATING    FORMS  OF    PRAYER.      THE   CHILD  AND 

THE    PRIMITIVE    MAN 

Prayer  is,  then,  as  we  have  seen,  a  social  relation 
which  has  as  aim  the  attainment  of  a  wider,  less 
partial  self, — a  more  confident  self,  a  self  more 
strong  to  endure,  a  self  of  larger  sympathies,  a  more 


26  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PKAYER 

truly  ethical,  more  completely  social  self.  This  is 
the  need,  the  ''problem"  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness. 

But  in  the  beginnings  of  religion,  as  we  should 
expect  from  the  vaguer,  less  discriminating  type  of 
earlier  consciousness,  there  was  no  marked  division 
between  religious  needs  and  needs  of  any  kind.  Irv- 
ing King  has  shown  this  in  his  thesis,  "The  Diifer- 
entiation  of  the  Religious  Consciousness".  All  ac- 
tivities might  partake  of  the  religious  character; 
none  were  religious  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  term. 
Ceremonies  which  might  be  called  either  religious  or 
magical  or  artistic,  and  which  have  indeed  been 
classed  as  all  three,  were  performed  at  the  recog- 
nized crises  of  life.  Birth,  the  attainment  of  ma- 
turity, marriage,  and  death,  were  the  recognized 
crises  in  the  life  of  the  individual;  while  seed-time 
and  harvest  or  the  expeditions  of  hunting  and  war- 
fare marked  tribal  crises  which  demanded  cere- 
monial preparation  of  a  religious  nature. 

What  is  true  of  primitive  races  in  this  connection 
is  also  true  of  the  child.  The  child  who  attaches 
any  really  vital  meaning  to  the  term  God,  makes  use 
of  that  meaning  in  order  to  satisfy  any  need  that 
can  possibly  occur  to  him.  This  fact  is  somewhat 
obscured,  as  might  be  expected,  from  the  way  in 
which  religious  education  is  given  to  children.  The 
child  may  learn  to  repeat  the  conventional  formula 
that  we  must  pray  to  God  ''to  make  us  good".  But 
any  one  who    attempts    to  discover  just  what  the 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  27 

child  means  in  this  connection,  finds  a  striking  blank- 
ness  of  content.  The  words  are  words  and  are  sel- 
dom exchangeable,  even  for  other  words,  unless 
the  teacher  himself  has  furnished  one  or  two  handy 
synonyms.  The  child  does  not  distinguish  his  re- 
ligious needs  from  other  needs.  He  has  therefore 
no  specifically  religious  needs.  He  wants  some- 
thing, and  he  makes  use  of  any  and  every  means  he 
can  think  of;  prayer  is  one  of  those  means.  And 
prayer  is  a  means  not  very  alien  to  the  general 
content  of  his  mental  life,  which  is  made  up  largely 
of  personal  ideas,  to  be  influenced  in  "personal" 
ways.  He  will  use  in  prayer  the  same  kind  of  whin- 
ing entreaty,  or  the  same  attempts  at  bargaining, 
which  mark  his  attempts  to  control  other  personal 
forces.  "Please,  God,  please  let"  such  and  such  a 
thing  happen,  or  "I  won't  ask  for  anything  else  for 
a  long  time  if  I  can  just  have  this",  or  "I'll  do  thus 
and  so,  if  you  will  do  thus  and  so",  are  types  of  en- 
treaty which  the  writer  has  heard  in  the  spontaneous 
parts  of  the  evening  prayers  of  several  children. 
The  child  in  the  tale  who  said:  "Please,  God.  take 
care  of  cousin  Ann  now,  but  we  don't  need  you  any 
more  here,  for  mother's  come  home",  showed  the 
exact  kind  of  need  which  he  felt,  and  the  exact  kind 
of  a  being  which  he  posited  to  satisfy  that  need. 
God  as  a  person  had  for  him  the  same  function  that 
other  persons,  more  especially  one  other  person,  had; 
there  was  as  yet  no  distinction  between  religious 
needs  and  the  other  needs  of  life. 


28  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PKAYER 

Nor  is  this  state  of  mind  confined  to  children.  It 
finds  a  very  dogmatic  expression  in  a  certain  type 
of  adult  religious  consciousness.  It  is  here  some- 
times due  to  a  rather  disorganized  feeling  that  God 
should  pervade  all  the  life;  yet  it  must  not  be  con- 
fused with  the  more  organized,  rational  expression 
of  that  same  feeling  which  will  be  treated  later. 
There  is  a  difference  between  the  conscious  appli- 
cation of  ethical  and  religious  values  to  common  ex- 
perience, which  comes  after  an  analysis  of  conscious- 
ness and  is  the  result  of  a  will  to  m^ake  experience 
ethically  and  religiously  valuable;  and  the  unthink- 
ing confusion  between  religious  needs  and  any  other 
kind  of  needs.  It  is  only  such  confusion  which  could 
lead  to  the  attitude  of  mind  of  a  revivalist  whom  I 
heard  relate  the  manner  in  which  God  gave  him,  in 
answer  to  prayer,  a  particular  suit  of  clothes  which 
he  wanted  but  could  not  afford.  He  saw  the  sample 
in  the  store:  he  haggled  over  the  price;  he  decided 
that  he  could  not  get  it;  he  went  away  and  prayed 
about  it ;  he  came  back  and  found  that  a  suit  of  the 
same  material  had  just  been  returned  and  that  he 
could  have  it  for  a  price  well  within  his  means;  he 
tried  it  on  and  "by  the  Providence  of  God"  it  fitted. 
In  hearing  this  tale  as  an  example  of  the  ''way  in 
which  God  provides  for  all  the  wants  of  his  chil- 
dren", a  religious  person  of  the  more  completely  so- 
cial type  is  conscious  of  a  feeling  of  disgust  at  what 
seems  to  him    irreverence;  while  the  psychologist 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  29 

notes  simply  the  undiscriminating  childisliness  of 
the  position. 

There  is,  then,  for  the  immature  consciousness,  no 
clear  distinction  of  the  j&eld  in  which  prayer  shall 
be  considered  both  effective  and  appropriate.  So 
that  from  the  standpoint  of  the  adult  we  are  apt  to 
wonder  at  a  blindness  which  could  find  the  means 
employed  effective, — at  least  effective  enough  to 
warrant  its  continued  application. 

We  must,  however,  notice  one  thing  at  once,  look- 
ing at  the  matter  from  the  standpoint  of  the  con- 
sciousness which  made  the  prayers. 

If  prayer  did  not  always  prove  an  adequate  means 
to  the  attainment  of  the  desired  end,  neither  did  any- 
thing else.  The  primitive  man's  science  was  not 
more  efficient  than  his  religion.  He  had  no  definitely 
organized  system  of  means  and  ends;  if  the  need 
was  urgent  he  tried  every  kind  of  means  he  could 
think  of,  until  one  of  them  apparently  "worked." 
If  he  distinguished  between  the  personal  and  im- 
personal at  all,  he  did  not  distinguish  so  carefully 
but  that  he  felt  himself  able  to  use  impersonal  means 
to  accomplish  directly  personal  results,  and  vice 
versa.  Thus,  on  the  one  hand,  he  might  use  a  potion 
to  procure  the  love  of  his  hesitating  mistress,  or 
oil  the  other  hand,  he  might  use  verbal  petition 
as  a  means  of  obtaining  rain.  The  distinctions  be- 
tween personal  and  impersonal,  material  and  spir- 
itual, are  distinctions  which  do  not  exist  at  all 
levels  of  consciousness.     They    have    been    slowly 


30  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYEE 

evolved  and  are  even  now  not  made  with  definite- 
ness.  Or  perhaps  it  would  be  more  exact  to  say 
that  in  the  case  of  some  problems  we  have 
reached  a  fair  degree  of  organization  in  the  use  of 
these  differences,  while  in  the  case  of  other  prob- 
lems we  either  do  not  choose  to  raise  the  distinc- 
tion, because  other  distinctions  are  more  fruitful  for 
our  purposes,  or  else  we  are  unable  to  raise  it,  and 
make  it  adequately  definite.  The  discussions  con- 
stantly going  on  with  regard  to  the  amount  of  effect 
which  faith  may  have  on  bodily  ailments,  and,  from 
the  other  side,  the  amount  of  relief  which  physical 
means  can  "minister  to  a  mind  diseased"  prove 
that  even  the  most  thorough  generalizations  of 
science  have  given  us  as  yet  no  final  system  of  means 
and  ends,  completely  organized. 

With  a  more  primitive  type  of  consciousness,  the 
organization  of  cause  and  effect  was  of  course  even 
looser.  When  a  man  wanted  a  thing,  he  went  through 
all  kinds  of  contortions,  mental  and  physical,  to  ob- 
tain it.  And  if  he  got  it,  he  felt  it  necessary  to  go 
through  as  many  of  those  contortions  as  he  could 
remember,  every  time  he  wanted  it  again.  The 
omission  of  the  most  trifling  accompaniment  of  his 
first  success  was  held  to  vitiate  the  whole  perform- 
ance. Thus,  in  the  snake  dance  of  the  Moqui  In- 
dians, designed  to  bring  rain,  the  slightest  variation 
from  the  prescribed  ritual,  a  ritual  extending  over 
many  days,  makes  necessary  the  repetition  of  the 
ceremony.    And  if  the  rain  does  not  come,  the  most 


PSYCHOLOGY   UK   PRAYER  31 

natural  conclusion  is  that  tliore  has  been  some  un- 
noticed omission  of  an  important  element.  This  is 
the  immediate  conclusion  in  all  cases  in  which  an 
expected  sequence  does  not  occur;  the  scientist  in 
his  laboratory,  failing  to  get  the  expected  reaction, 
inevitably  assumes  that  the  means  he  used  in  this 
case,  though  apparently  the  same  as  the  means  used 
in  the  case  when  the  reaction  did  follow,  must  in 
reality  have  varied  from  it  in  some  unnoticed  but 
important  particular.  He  repeats  the  sequence  with 
increased  care ;  so  did  the  Indian.  And  the  discrimi- 
nation which  the  scientist  consciously  seeks  and  the 
Indian  gropes  for,  comes  gradually  to  both. 

The  primitive  lack  of  discrimination  appeared  in 
many  views  of  the  cause  and  effect  relation.  Fre- 
quently it  is  quite  possible  to  trace  the  line  of  as- 
sociation. Thus,  as  Josiah  Tyler  relates:^  "One  of 
the  first  missionaries  to  the  Zulus  was  accustomed  to 
take  his  overcoat  to  the  religious  service  whenever 
there  was  a  probability  of  rain.  A  drought  having 
come  he  was  importuned  by  no  means  to  leave  be- 
hind his  'rain-producing  garment'  ".  Frequently, 
moreover,  the  various  activities  associated  with  the 
attainment  of  a  given  end,  contained  one  or  more 
elements  which  were  really  significant.  The  Malay 
preparation  for  an  elephant  hunt,  which  consisted  in 
smearing  the  body  with  four  kinds  of  aromatic 
leaves  and  uttering  a  charm  in  the  process,  luas 


'  Josiah  Tyler,  '"Forty  Years  Among  the  Zulus,"  p.  lOG. 


32  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

efficacious  in  destroying  the  scent  of  the  approach- 
ing hunters. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  prayers  of  the  child. 
Prayer  is  one  of  many  means  he  employs  toward 
the  desired  end.  If  he  gains  the  end,  he  is  not  likely 
to  try  the  experiment  next  time  of  leaving  out  any 
of  the  factors  in  his  previous  success  in  order  to 
satisfy  a  theoretical  curiosity  as  to  which  factor 
produced  the  result.  The  theoretical  curiosity  is 
not  so  strongly  developed  as  this  would  implj^ .  And 
the  child  usually  does  succeed, — in  time,  and  after 
he  has  tried  enough  variety  of  means.  If  he  does 
not  succeed,  it  is  because  his  attention  has  wandered 
olf  to  fields  and  pastures  new.  In  other  words,  the 
times  when  his  prayer  preceded  a  success  remain 
in  his  mind  more  than  the  times  in  which  his  jirayer 
preceded  a  failure,  and  this  for  the  reason  that  the 
problems  which  were  important  enough  to  hold  his 
attention  were  important  enough  to  hold  his  efforts, 
and  thus  eventually  to  reach  a  satisfactory  solu- 
tion. 

So  prayer  is,  for  the  immature  consciousness,  one 
of  many  elements  in  an  undiscriminating  attempt 
to  solve  a  problem.  It  is  used  to  obtain  the  satis- 
faction of  many  kinds  of  desires.  Sometimes  it 
works;  sometimes  it  does  not;  for  some  things  it 
works  especially  well,  and  for  others  not  so  well. 
But  how  is  the  child  to  know  the  cause  of  its  work- 
ing when  it  works,  and  the  cause  of  its  failing  when 
it  fails,  analyzing  in  each  case  the  psychological  ele- 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PRAYER  33 

ments  which  make  the  pra.yer  efificacions  for  some 
things  and  not  for  others!  Such  isolation  of  the  ele- 
ments of  a  causal  seciuence,  is  one  of  the  highest 
achievements  of  an  advanced  science,  and  even  as 
yet  has  proved  possible  only  in  a  limited  sphere, 
which  sphere  becomes  for  us,  it  is  worth  noting,  oio' 
sphere  of  the  impersonal. 

The  beginnings  of  this  scientific  discrimination 
come  when  the  causal  relation  between  the  prayer 
and  the  result  is  broken  in  one  of  two  ways.  Either 
the  prayer  does  not  bring  the  result  or  the  result 
comes  without  the  prayer.  The  latter  of  these  two 
events  is  likely  to  occur  only  in  matters  of  little 
importance.  For  in  important  matters,  the  experi- 
ment of  omitting  any  elements  of  a  hitherto  suc- 
cessful sequence  is  not  likelj^  to  be  tried.  But  occa- 
sions come,  in  these  important  matters,  when  the 
desired  result  is  not  forthcoming.  And  on  such  oc- 
casions different  sorts  of  experiments  are  tried. 
The  sequence  may  be  repeated  more  carefully,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Snake  dance  alreadv  mentioned;  or 
the  sequence  may  be  varied.  The  gods  may  even  be 
deliberately  changed,  if  they  have  not  given  the 
desired  result.  Thus  in  the  case  of  the  tutelary 
deities  of  China,  "when  the  sacrificial  victims  are 
perfect,  the  corn  in  the  vessels  pure,  the  sacrifices 
at  their  proper  times,  and  yet  there  arises  drought 
or  flood,  then  the  tutelary  spirits  may  be  changed".^ 


'  Faber,  "Mind  of  Mencius,"  p.  72. 


34  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   PEAYER 

This  is  a  beginning  of  a  discrimination  which  takes 
the  form  of  a  restriction  of  the  place  in  which  cer- 
tain gods  may  be  effectively  used. 

A  similar  limitation  of  the  power  of  the  gods  is 
found  in  the  tribal  nature  of  many  of  the  deities. 
Thus,  among  the  Ewe-speaking  peoples,  the  gods  are 
supposed  to  be  completely  "indifferent  to  acts  of 
sacrilege  on  the  parts  of  Europeans,  which  they 
avenge  with  death  when  committed  by  natives".^ 
Some  such  assumption  has  been  found  necessary  to 
account  for  the  fact,  evident  enough  in  their  experi- 
ence, that  the  Europeans  do  not  suffer  from  these 
acts  of  sacrilege,  and  cannot  be  made  so  to  suffer, 
either  through  fear  of  the  god,  or  through  fear  of 
the  vengeance  of  the  priest. 

A  similar  discrimination  between  the  things  which 
God  is  likely  to  perform  and  those  that  he  is  not, 
took  place  in  the  experience  of  a  small  boy  of  my 
acquaintance.  He  had  been  brought  up  with  a  sense 
of  the  extreme  closeness  of  the  relation  of  God  to 
the  minute  events  of  daily  life.  One  day,  in  a  fit 
of  exasperation  he  uttered  the  word,  "Damn".  He 
ran  into  the  house,  terror-stricken.  When  he  grew 
calm  enough  to  tell  his  tale  to  his  mother,  he  added: 
"I  thought  God  was  going  to  strike  me  dead,  as  he 
used  to  do  with  people  in  the  Bible.  But  he  didn  't ' '. 
He  had  begun  to  discriminate,  and  to  set  certain 
spheres  of  life  aside  as  not  exposed  to  direct  divine 


^  A.  B.  Ellis,  "Ewe-Speaking  Peoples  of  the  West  Coast,"  p.  81. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   PRAYER  35 

interference.  Such  an  experience,  if  the  incident  in 
question  involves  a  large  enough  part  of  life  to  make 
a  strong  impression,  might  easily  lead  to  a  total 
rejection  of  the  hypothesis  of  any  God  at  all,  unless 
he  is  furnished  by  some  older  person  with  a  ready- 
made  distinction  which  answers  his  purpose. 

But  such  a  rejection  is  not  likely  to  happen  at 
once.  It  takes  an  event  of  great  emotional  signifi- 
cance to  upset  the  habits  already  formed.  There 
are  so  many  possible  ways  of  explaining  exceptions; 
and  their  number  is  multiplied  a  hundred-fold  when 
personal  factors  enter  into  the  problem.  Moreover, 
it  is  a  psychological  commonplace  that  that  which 
we  expect  to  see  is  much  more  easily  taken  into  our 
minds  than  that  which  we  do  not  expect,  and  that 
which  accords  with  our  habitual  methods  of  classi- 
fication is  much  more  easily  held  there  than  that 
which  does  not.  So  it  usually  requires  many  in- 
stances of  God's  non-interference  to  induce  the  child 
to  make  radical  changes  in  his  point  of  view. 

Then,  too,  both  in  the  case  of  the  primitive  man 
and  in  that  of  the  child,  there  are  certain  types  of 
problem  in  which  ])rayer  has  a  very  real  effect.  They 
are  the  types  which,  partly  on  this  very  account  and 
through  this  very  means,  are  distinguished  later  as 
the  social  and  personal  problems.  A  Zulu  exercises 
certain  charms  against  the  life  of  a  certain  man;  he 
lets  the  man  know  of  it;  and  the  man  actually  does 
die.  For  the  Zulu,  and  we  must  confess  for  the  an- 
thro]iologist  also,   though   in   a   different  way,   the 


36  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

death  is  the  result  of  his  enemy's  prayer.  Cere- 
monies for  the  sake  of  healing  may  also  be  classed 
with  those  for  the  sake  of  destroying. 

Besides  those  religious  rites  which  produced  their 
effect  through  their  influence  on  the  mind  of  an- 
other person,  there  are  those  which  reached  the  de- 
sired end  by  affecting  the  mind  of  the  worshipper 
himself.  And  here  the  result  is  even  more  certain. 
We  find  accounts  of  it  especially,  in  dealing  with 
primitive  society,  in  the  preparations  for  war.  By 
ceremonies  which  were  as  religious  as  anything  else 
the  tribe  did,  and  religious  too  in  the  same  sense, 
however  far  a  war-dance  may  seem  from  religion 
to  the  twentieth  century  mind,  the  tribe  worked  it- 
self up  to  a  pitch  of  frenzied  self-confidence  which 
made  failure  almost  impossible.  Naturally  the  other 
tribe  might  do  the  same.  But  in  this  case,  fate  was 
on  the  side  of  the  most  "religious",  granting  that 
the  numbers  were  fairly  equal,  since  they  were  the 
most  fearless  and  ferocious. 

In  the  case  of  the  child,  also,  discrimination  comes 
slowly  for  the  same  reason,  namely,  that  prayer 
seems  successful  in  many  of  the  cases  in  which  he 
uses  it,  and  hence  justifies  itself  for  him.  He  prays 
for  a  thing  and  lets  his  parents  know  of  his  prayer; 
he  gets  what  he  prays  for,  as  they  do  not  want  to 
disappoint  his  faith.  Or  he  goes  to  school  and  comes 
to  his  first  examination.  He  prays  that  he  may  not 
fail.  The  calm  of  mental  assurance  produced  by 
such  a  prayer  is  of  course  the  best  possible  guar- 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER  37 

antee  of  success.  So  entirely  does  prayer  seem  to 
justify  itself  in  such  matters  as  these  that  I  have 
even  known  many  college  girls  who  confessed,  al- 
though with  a  little  shame,  that  they  always  prayed 
for  success  in  examinations.  Prayer  for  such  things 
is  so  efficient  that  when  discrimination  finally  comes, 
as  it  usually  does  in  the  higher  types  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  it  is  likely  to  be  based,  not  on  the 
scientific  criterion  of  efficiency,  but  on  the  ethical 
criterion  of  value,  which  we  shall  next  ]n-oceed  to 
consider. 

So  far,  then,  this  much  seems  evident:  that  for 
the  immature  consciousness  there  is  no  clear  dis- 
tinction between  the  ends  for  which  prayer  and 
other  religious  means  may  ap))ropriately  be  em- 
ployed, and  those  for  which  it  may  not.  Nor  is 
there  any  such  discrimination  in  the  case  of  any 
other  means.  And  since  the  use  of  religious  cere- 
monies seemed  to  justify  itself  as  much  as  the  use 
of  any  other  means  known,  scientific  discrimination, 
that  is,  a  discrimination  that  would  restrict  the  re- 
ligious means  to  a  certain  type  of  problems  on  the 
ground  of  recognized  inefficiency  in  other  types, 
came  very  si  owl  v. 

Another  form  of  discrimination  was,  however,  also 
taking  place.  Irving  King,  in  liis  thesis  ^'The  Dif- 
ferentiation of  the  Religious  Consciousness",  speaks 
of  it  as  the  discrimination  between  magic  and  re- 
ligion. But  this  seems  only  one  aspect  of  the  entire 
distinction  between  activities  necessary  for  the  at- 


38  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

tainment  of  the  widest,  most  social  self,  and  those 
necessary  for  the  attainment  of  some  partial  self. 

Certain  needs  are  found  to  be  especially  import- 
ant for  the  tribe  as  a  whole.  The  ceremonies  for 
their  attainment  are  performed  by  the  entire  group, 
or  later  by  a  priest  or  medicine  man  representing 
the  gronp.  And  these  ceremonies  receive  the  au- 
thority and  social  reinforcement  of  the  group.  They 
are  group-activities.  The  gods  to  whom  they  appeal 
are  the  ''high  gods"  of  a  tribe,  and  care  for  the 
tribe's  interests.  The  members  of  the  tribe  have, 
however,  desires  which  do  not  concern  the  good  of 
the  group  and  which  may  even  be  hostile  to  the  wel- 
fare of  some  other  member.  In  these  desires  they 
do  not  receive  the  authority  and  social  reinforce- 
ment of  the  group.  In  other  words,  they  cannot 
appeal  to  the  gods  who  care  for  the  tribe;  they 
cannot  make  use  of  the  ritual  and  prayer  in  which 
the  tribe  takes  part  as  a  whole. 

Thus  there  arises  a  distinction  between  the  wider 
social  ends,  attained  by  the  religious  rites  of  the 
tribe,  and  the  narrower  ends  of  individual  desires. 
The  former  of  these  are  the  ends  which  with  later 
discrimination  come  to  be  known  as  ethical  and  re- 
ceive the  authoritative  sanction  of  the  ethical  re- 
ligions. For  the  latter  there  are  two  ways  open. 
They  seek  their  fulfillment  either  through  perform- 
ances which  become  recognized  as  "magical"  and 
so  inimical  to  the  purpose  of  the  more  "social"  re- 
ligion, or  through  the  creation  of  lesser  gods  who 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  39 

are  not  so  indifferent  to  individual  desires  as  are  the 
gods  of  the  tribe,  and  who  may  therefore  be  bribed 
for  individual  ends.  These  methods  ran  into  each 
other;  ''magical"  practices  of  all  kinds  are  carried 
on  in  connection  with  the  lesser  gods;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  one  religion  is  apt  to  stioinatize  as 
"magic"  the  dealings  with  gods  of  other  religions. 
Thus  the  early  Christians  did  not  deny  reality  to 
the  gods  of  Greece  and  Rome,  but  considered  thorn 
demons  whom  it  was  unlawful  to  worship. 

These  two  methods  of  supplying  the  individual 
with  satisfaction  for  his  more  partial  ends,  while 
not  absolutely  distinguished,  are  yet  in  some  par- 
ticulars different.  The  use  of  magic  has  always  im- 
})lied  a  distinct  conflict  with  the  religious  authority 
of  the  time.  The  attitude  of  the  author  of  I  Samuel 
toward  Saul's  consultation  of  the  Witch  of  Endor' 
and  that  of  the  Middle  Ages  toward  the  black  art 
are  examples  of  this.  Saul  could  no  longer  obtain 
the  favor  of  the  god  of  his  people;  he  resorted  to 
magic.  And  magic  was  a  distinct  affront  to  the  re- 
ligion of  his  nation. 

The  second  method,  the  method  of  polytheism,  is 
found  in  connection  with  less  ethical  religions,  and 
does  not  imply  a  moral  affront  to  the  chief  gods  of 
the  people.  It  seems  more  a  matter  of  economic 
convenience  that  the  gods  who  care  for  the  interests 
of  the  whole  tribe  should  not  be  bothered  with  small 


I  Samuel  28. 


40  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PKAYER 

affairs.     Thus  Hirata,  the  exponent  of  Shintoism, 
writes  :^ 

''The  gods  are  not  to  be  annoyed  by  greedy  peti- 
tions, for  the  Mikado  offers  up  petitions  daily  for 
his  people,  which  are  far  more  effectual  than  those 
of  his  subjects."  Many  religions  contain  the  con- 
ception of  a  god  too  high  to  be  of  use  in  the  affairs 
of  men,  supplemented  by  a  host  of  lesser  gods  who 
serve  the  needs  of  the  day.  Such  is  the  Shang-Ti 
of  the  Chinese,  who  is  worshipped  by  the  emperor 
alone,  but  who  is  supplemented  by  local  deities,  an- 
cestral spirits,  domestic  gods,  and  gods  of  particular 
callings.  Such  is  also  Mawu,  the  chief  god  among 
the  Ewe-speaking  peoples  on  the  west  coast  of 
Africa,  who,  A.  B.  Ellis  declares,-  is  ignored  by  the 
natives  as  too  great  and  distant;  for  "to  the  native 
mind,  a  god  that  works  no  evil  to  man  and  is  indif- 
ferent to  his  welfare",  as  this  high  god  of  the  sId.^ 
is  supposed  to  be  on  account  of  his  greatness,  ''is 
one  that  it  would  be  a  work  of  supererogation  to  ap- 
pease, while  there  are  so  many  others  who  either 
work  evil  and  have  to  be  appeased  or  are  special 
guardians  and  have  to  be  lauded".  It  is  worth 
noting  that  the  natives  commonly  identify  the  new 
god  of  the  Tuissionaries  with  this  Mawu,  and  take  the 
message  of  the  missionary  as  meaning  in  essence 
that  Mawu  does  really  interfere  in  the  affairs  of  men 
and  hence  requires  worship.    When  this  claim  is  ap- 


•  Qr.otod  in  Griffis.  "The  Rolifjions  of  .Japan."  p.  87. 

■  A.  B.  Ellis.  "Ewe-Speaking  Peoples  of  the  West  Coast,"  p.  34. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER  41 

l)arently  contradicted  by  the  results  of  their  ex- 
perience in  trying  to  get  certain  favors  from  Mawu, 
they  are  apt  to  relapse  into  their  former  belief  in 
his  indifference.  They  have  simply  added  a  god 
to  the  number  of  gods  they  must  placate,  and  then 
dropped  him  again  after  due  trial.  Thej^  have  not 
in  such  cases  reached  any  more  developed  stage  of 
religious  consciousness  by  any  careful  distinction 
of  the  place  of  God  in  experience. 

Psychologically,  a  religion  of  many  gods  for  the 
many  different  desires  gives  extreme  emi)hasis  to 
the  element  of  difference  in  the  selves  constantly 
arising  in  the  stream  of  consciousness,  but  fails  to 
give  any  emphasis  on  the  side  of  unity.  Psycho- 
logically it  is  correct  to  say  that  there  is  a  diiferent 
self  for  every  new  locality  and  every  new  kind  of 
crisis.  Whether  it  is  equally  correct  to  give  a  re- 
ligious value  to  all  of  these  selves  is  a  matter  of 
ethics  rather  than  of  psychology.  Ethically  the  criti- 
cism of  such  a  type  of  religion  would  be  that  it 
focussed  attention  on  and  gave  religious  value  to 
activities  indii^'ereiit  or  even  hostile  to  the  highest 
social  ends. 

For  these  lesser  deities  are  not,  in  most  cases, 
used  for  moral  support  and  encouragement;  they 
are  used  for  all  sorts  of  trivial  ends,  even  less  worthy 
than  the  afore-mentioned  coat  of  the  revivalist.  And 
they  are  so  used  with  more  logical  justification  than 
in  the  case  of  the  revivalist.  For  the  conce])tion  of 
a  Ood  univei'sal  enough  to  be  vitally  interested  in 


42  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYEB 

the  fate  of  all  men,  would  naturally  operate  to  ex- 
clude foolish  and  irrelevant  petitions.  It  may,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Ewe-speaking  peoples  already 
noticed,  entirely  remove  petition  to  and  interest  in 
such  a  god.  Or,  if  the  idea  of  God  has  sufficient 
vitality,  the  prayer  mfxy  remove  for  the  time  being 
the  desire  for  the  trivial  things  for  which  the  peti- 
tioner feels  it  foolish  to  pray.  But,  at  any  rate, 
such  a  conception  identifies  religion  with  the  ethical 
side  of  man's  nature,  the  more  inclusive  social  side. 

But  in  the  case  of  the  lesser  gods  of  a  polytheistic 
religion  there  is  no  such  ethical  appeal.  x\nd  this  is 
just  because  they  are  identified  with  the  needs  of  a 
small  particular  self  out  of  the  many  selves  which 
make  up  the  individual.  Hence  while  the  so-called 
ethical  religions  change  their  conception  of  God  with 
the  developing  conception  of  society,  always  striv- 
ing to  find  the  highest  unity,  the  most  inclusive  so- 
cial self,  the  worship  of  many  minor  deities  misses 
the  powerfully  compelling  ethical  force  of  a  wide 
social  self  and  finds  in  its  connection  with  immediate 
desires  an  emotional  and  psychological  compensa- 
tion for  this  loss. 

In  the  case  of  a  child  brought  up  under  the  influ- 
ence of  an  ethical  religion,  this  discrimination  ar- 
rives more  easily,  being  given  to  it  largely  ready- 
made.  It  may  even  come  so  early  that  the  other 
kind  of  discrimination,  the  scientific,  never  arises 
at  all.  Thus  the  child  may  cease  to  pray  for  '^ma- 
terial" objects  not  because  he  finds  that  his  prayer 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  43 

is  useless,  but  because  even  before  maldng  that  dis- 
covery he  comes  to  have  a  sense  of  shame  in  *' both- 
ering God  with  such  little  things".  This  is  the 
explanation  of  the  shame  felt  by  tlie  college  girls 
already  mentioned  in  their  prayer  for  success  in 
examinations.  The  prayer  "worked"  beautifully; 
the  criticism  of  its  use  was  not  scientific  but  ethical. 

Other  girls  have  told  the  writer  that  they  some- 
times prayed  for  success  in  athletic  contests.  But 
here  the  ethical  criticism  came  still  more  forcibly 
into  play.  They  were  demandinsi:,  at  least  implicitly, 
the  defeat  of  another.  And  they  had  not  the  sublime 
confidence  of  David  which  could  assume  that  the  god 
of  battles  was  inevitably  on  his  side.  As  one  girl 
said:  "I  don't  dare  ask  any  more  that  the  other 
team  mav  be  beaten,  but  I  ask  that  our  team  mav 
play  its  best,  and,"  with  a  slight  laugh,  "I  guess  I 
rather  hope  the  other  team  will  forget  to  ask." 

The  same  attitude  of  ethical  discrimination  came 
out  in  a  discussion  with  another  girl  concerning  the 
eflficacy  of  prayer.  ''T  have  asked  for  all  kinds  of 
things,"  she  said,  *'and  T  have  usually  got  them,  as 
far  as  I  remember,  but  T  always  feel  so  horribly 
ashamed  afterwards  to  think  that  T  bothered  God 
with  such  t]-ifles.  T  don't  do  it  much  now."  Dis- 
crimination had  apparently  come  in  her  case,  not 
because  of  a  recognized  inadequacy  of  prayer  in  any 
department  of  life,  but  because  with  moral  growth 
there  came  a  sense  of  shame  in  the  use  of  a  social 
relation  as  means  to  a  trivial  end. 


44  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

St.  Teresa  admirably  illustrates  the  attitude  takeu 
by  the  developed  religious  consciousness  towards 
such  trivial  petitions, — trivial  from  the  ethical  point 
of  view:  "I  laugh  and  grieve,"  she  says,  "at  the 
things  people  come  to  ask  our  prayers  for.  The}" 
should  rather  beg  of  God  that  he  would  enable  them 
to  trample  such  foolery  under  their  feet.'"  Never- 
theless she  finds  a  value  in  their  turning  to  God,  even 
under  such  circumstances.  So  her  convent  accepts 
the  prayers  and  offers  them,  though  "I  am  per- 
suaded our  Lord  never  heard  me  in  these  matters, 
— for  persons  even  request  us  to  ask  His  Majesty 
for  money  and  revenues". 

With  this  ethical  distinction  between  the  things 
which  may  properly  be  asked  and  those  which  may 
not,  we  naturally  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the 
more  discriminating  t>^es  of  prayer.  Ethically,  this 
attitude  points  to  a  clearer  and  higher  conception 
of  the  moral  ideal ;  practically,  it  undoubtedly  means 
the  loss  of  a  certain  power  which  might  produce 
results.  For  the  ethical  and  the  scientific  discrim- 
inations do  not  exactly  coincide  here.  Practically, 
prayer  and  the  confidence  resulting  therefrom  would 
be  of  very  distinct  use  in  the  winning  of  a  basket- 
ball game;  but  the  ethically  developed  consciousness 
would  be  very  careful  in  making  such  a  use  of  it. 
This  loss  of  practical  power  mav  doubtless  be  com- 
pensated by  a  growth  in  self-confidence  due  to  a 


^  St.  Teresa,  "The  Way  of  Perfection,"  p.  4. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PRAYER  45 

more  intimate  and  organized  knowledge  of  the  means 
needed  for  the  desired  resnlt; — in  the  examination, 
by  a  conscious  realization  of  the  value  of  calm  and 
confidence  and  by  a  consciously  acquired  self-control, 
and  in  the  game,  by  a  conscious  realization  of  the 
need  of  courage  and  self-reliance  and  the  application 
of  that  knowledge. 

Whether  the  loss  is  made  good  or  not,  the  fact 
remains  that  in  all  cases  in  which  a  desired  result 
may  be  obtained  by  an  effect  on  the  individual  con- 
cerned, prayer  is  a  means  of  decided  efficiency.  And 
this  leads  to  the  discussion  of  the  more  discriminat- 
ing types  of  prayer,  in  which  the  use  of  prayer  as 
a  means  is  gradually  limited  to  just  this  kind  of  an 
effect. 

ni 

INTERMEDIATE  TYPES.      THE  GROWTH  OF  DISCRIMINATION 

"VVe  have  said  that  prayer  is  a  social  relation  be- 
tween two  selves  arising  simultaneously  in  con- 
sciousness, having  for  its  end  the  establishment  of 
a  wider,  more  complete  self.  This  definition  has  not 
seemed  to  hold  entirely  in  the  case  of  the  immature 
consciousness,  because,  with  more  mature  discrim- 
ination, we  no  longer  identify  our  "selves"  with 
the  type  of  things  there  prayed  for.  There  has  been 
a  progressive  limitation  of  the  field  to  which  the 
imaginative  social  process  may  apply.  Yet,  even 
for  the  adult  consciousness,  the  line  between  the 
personal  and  the  impersonal  is  a  shadowy  one.    So, 


46  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

although  as  we  saw  at  the  close  of  the  last  section, 
prayer  is  gradually  confined,  as  the  worshipper  be- 
comes more  discriminating,  to  the  establishment  of 
a  completer  self,  yet  there  are  several  types  of 
prayer  more  or  less  widely  employed  at  the  present 
day,  which  lie  on  the  border  between  the  primitive 
prayers  and  the  completely  social  prayers.  Some 
of  these  were  mentioned  at  the  close  of  the  last  sec- 
tion, bnt  they  are  varied  and  numerous  enough  to 
deserve  special  consideration  before  we  turn  to  the 
prayers  which  confessedly  aim  at  the  development 
of  a  self.  For  the  prayers  to  be  next  considered  do 
not,  from  one  standpoint,  aim  at  such  a  development. 
They  are  rather  prayers  for  so-called  "objective" 
results.  Among  them  may  be  counted  the  prayers 
of  those  suppliants  already  noticed,  whose  material 
petitions  St.  Teresa  bewailed,  declaring  with  a  scien- 
tific skepticism  rather  remarkable  in  a  woman  noted 
for  her  reliance  on  prayer:  "I  am  persuaded  my 
Lord  never  heard  me  in  such  matters. ' " 

In  an  article  by  F.  0.  Beck,-  dealing  with  the  re- 
sults of  a  questionnaire  on  the  subject  of  prayer, 
only  five  per  cent  of  the  respondents,  all  of  whom 
habitually  prayed,  claimed  that  "objective"  answers 
to  prayer,  that  is,  answers  which  affected  conditions 
outside  the  subject,  were  possible.  This  is  very 
instructive,  as  showing  the  extent  to  which  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  is  willing  to  confine  the  results 


^  "The  Way  of  Perfection."  p.  4. 

-  Amer.  Jour,  of  Rel.  Psych,  and  Education,  I,  1906,  p.  107. 


\ 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  47 

of  prayer  to  an  effect  ii])on  the  individual  who  prays. 
If  the  respondents  had  been  children,  without  doubt 
a  greater  proportion  would  have  been  observed. 
Yet  this  doubt  in  the  objectivity  of  prayer-answers 
is  not  due  to  a  general  decrease  of  l>elief  in  the 
efficacy  of  prayer,  on  account  of  numerous  trials 
which  have  failed.  For  most  of  the  respondents,  to 
judge  from  the  answers  given,  were  people  of  strong 
religious  conviction.  The  doubt  rei)resents  rather, 
as  we  have  maintained,  a  gradual  distinction  of  the 
field  in  which  prayer  may  appropriately  be  applied 
as  a  means. 

Even  in  the  cases  referred  to  as  objective  answers 
to  prayer,  we  shall  see  that  there  was  a  social  rela-  \/ 

tion  employed  as  means  and  a  social  end  attained. 
But  while  the  social  nature  of  the  means  was  recog- 
nized, the  social  nature  of  the  end  was  not  so  recog- 
nized. The  result  was  said  to  have  taken  place  in 
the  world  ''outside  the  self".  We  shall  see,  how- 
ever, that  this  supposition  is  due  to  lack  of  psycho- 
logical analysis.  The  result  took  place  first  in  a 
social  form,  producing  a  new  self,  which  had  there- 
fore inevitably  a  new  environment. 

We  have  already  noticed,  in  the  case  of  the  exam- 
ination and  the  basket-ball  game,  one  division  of 
such  prayers, — those  in  w^hich  a  more  confident  self 
was  established.  There  are  other  cases  which  come 
under  this  head.  And  we  must  notice  that  in  the 
attainment  of  any  end,  the  part  played  by  confidence 
is  enormous.    First  in  its  effect  on  the  person  con- 


48  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

cerned,  next  in  its  effect  upon  others.  We  call  to 
mind  the  case  of  George  Miiller,'  and  others  like 
him,  who  let  the  Christian  world  know  of  their  needs, 
of  the  missionary  character  of  their  work,  and  of 
their  complete  dependence  on  prayer  to  furnish  all 
their  necessities.  The  fact  of  their  trust  makes  the 
strongest  kind  of  an  appeal, — not  only  their  trust  in 
God,  but  also  in  the  willingness  of  the  Christian 
world  to  help.  Such  confidence  it  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  disappoint.  Even  in  cases  in  which  the 
external  knowledge  of  the  prayer  is  lacking,  confi- 
dence, in  its  direct  effect  upon  the  person  concerned 
and  its  indirect  effect  through  him  on  others,  is  the 
strongest  assurance  of  success. 

In  addition  to  the  fact  that  prayer  induces  a  sub- 
jective attitude  well  qualified  to  bring  about  new 
objective  results,  it  also  induces  an  attitude  ready 
to  interpret  to  its  own  end  those  results  which  it  did 
not  bring  about.  Sensations  from  without  can  only 
come  into  a  consciousness  prepared  to  receive  them 
and  can  only  be  arranged  in  the  forms  which  that 
consciousness  furnishes.  This  is  of  course  a  com- 
monplace both  in  philosophy  and  psychology'. 
Events  which  to  one  mind  will  be  interpreted  in 
scientific  terms  will  to  another  be  interpreted  in 
aesthetic,  to  another  in  religious  terms.  Thus  Rob- 
ert Lyde,  an  Englishman  who  lived  in  the  good  old 
days  when  God  was  a  god  of  battles  and  favored 


'  "The   Life  of  Trust :   Being  a   Narrative  of  the  Lord's  Dealing^ 
with  George  Miiller."     New  Amer.  edi.,  Crowell,  New  York. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PRAYER  49 

individual  ]^arties,  makes  a  religious  statement  of 
events  which  a  modern  writer  would  relate  from  an 
entirely  different  standpoint.  He  tells  of  an  en- 
counter with  two  Frenclimen  in  which  one  of  them 
lifted  a  weapon  against  him:^  "Through  God's 
wonderful  providence  it  either  fell  out  of  his  hand 
or  he  let  it  drop.  And  at  this  time  the  Almighty 
God  gave  me  strength  enough  to  take  one  man  and 
throw  him  at  the  other's  head," — thus  effectually 
disposing  of  both.  A  ])erfectly  coherent  account  of 
an  incident,  in  terms  which,  however  foreign  to  our 
method  of  organization  of  the  same  facts,  are  never- 
theless true  for  their  own  particular  purpose, — that 
of  giving  an  account  of  exactly  what  happened  to 
the  consciousness  and  experience  of  the  man  Robert 
Lyde. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  the  terms  used  that  the  sub- 
jective attitude  affects  the  material  received  into 
consciousness.  There  may  be  a  vital  difference  in 
the  effect  and  use  of  the  same  material.  To  a  per- 
son confidently  expecting  the  intervention  of  a  good 
God  in  certain  difficulties,  and  a  person  expecting 
the  worst  possible  outcome,  or  merely  doubting  what 
the  outcome  may  be,  the  same  objective  stimuli  may 
be  })roductive  of  widely  differing  results.  When  a 
person  goes  through  the  world,  as  does  the  char- 
acter in  a  modern  novel,  ''The  Dawn  of  a  Tomor- 
row", in  the  confident  expectation  of  "Good's  com- 


*  Arber's  English  Garland.  Vol.  7,  p.  440. 


50  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

ing,  good's  coining",  and  the  firm  determination 
to  interpret  whatever  happens  as  good,  or  at  least 
as  possessing  the  potentialities  of  good,  if  she  can 
make  use  of  them;  her  prayer  for  "good  things" 
is  certain  to  be  answered,  as  far  as  her  own  inter- 
pretation of  her  life  is  concerned,  and  that  is,  in  the 
last  analysis,  all  we  have  to  deal  with  here.  He 
who  can  sav  with  Marcus  Aurelius :  ' '  Oh,  Universe, 
all  that  Thou  wishest,  I  wish,"  is  quite  certain  to 
obtain  his  wishes.  But  this  is  carrying  us  away 
already  from  the  use  of  prayer  for  definite  external 
objects  into  the  conscious  applica.tion  of  it  in  the 
attainment  of  a  larger  self. 

Prayers  which  reach  their  end  through  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  strongly  confident  self  will  be  taken  up 
again  in  the  consideration  of  the  more  highly  ethical 
prayers,  where  the  confidence  is  in  matters  purely 
ethical.  Here  we  will  next  consider  a  type  of  cases 
in  which  the  effect  of  the  prayer  relation  is  not  a 
general  expansion  of  the  self  in  the  manner  just 
considered,  but  an  increase  of  the  power  of  the  self 
along  some  very  specific  line.  The  relation  arising 
between  the  me,  or  self  of  immediate  desire,  and  the 
alter,  which  is  in  this  case  a  temporarilj^  dissociated 
part  of  the  stream  of  consciousness,  brings  to  the 
solution  of  the  problem  associations  which  the  me 
was  incapable  of  arousing. 

One  incident  will  show  the  type  of  prayer  here 
meant.  A  college  girl  related  this  experience  to  the 
writer:     She  had  lost  her  physics  note-book  and 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  51 

the  time  of  examination  was  approaching.  She  let 
it  go  till  the  last  minute,  ho])ing  to  tind  it.  Then 
being  in  some  concern,  she  made  it  a  matter  of 
prayer,  saying:  "If  it  is  Yonr  will  that  I  try  the 
examination  without  this  book  as  a  punishment  for 
my  carelessness,  very  well ;  I  will  do  my  best  that 
way.  But  it  wouUl  make  things  much  easier  if  T 
could  find  it,"  She  immediately  felt  an  im])ulse  to 
go  to  n  certain  store  in  the  village.  She  reasoned 
with  herself,  saying:  "I  haven't  been  there  for 
over  a  month.  1  remember  distincth^  the  last  time 
I  was  there  and  that  was  before  I  lost  the  book." 
The  imjiulse  continued,  and  taking  it  as  an  answer 
to  her  i)rayer,  she  went.  As  she  entered,  a  clerk 
approached  her  with  the  book,  saying:  "You  left 
this  here  ten  days  ago,  and  T  could  not  send  it,  not 
knowing  your  address."  Then  and  not  till  then  the 
memory  of  a  s})ecial  visit  made  to  the  store  by  an 
unusual  road,  flashed  across  her  mind.  But  that 
memory  had  been  latent  all  the  time  in  the  subcon- 
scious activities  of  her  self,  ])otent  enough  to  induce 
action,  but  not  strong  enough  to  come  to  conscious- 
ness in  the  shape  of  definite  recollection.  The  fact 
that  the  impulse  appeared  with  the  relinquishment 
of  the  conscious  striving  is  also  significant  as  show- 
ing a  characteristic  of  subconscious  action.  Tt  is 
like  the  remembering  of  a  name  ])y  giving  up  the 
strenuous  effort  for  it  or  the  attainment  of  sleep 
by  ceasing  the  arduous  pursuit  of  it.  These  latter 
achiovoments  arc  not  given  a  religious  sanction,  but 


52  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER 

the  psychological  process  is  the  same.  The  strenu- 
ously striving  self  of  momentary  desire  and  the  self 
of  long-established  habit  are  the  two  selves  con- 
cerned in  this  relation.  But  the  two  selves  are  not 
completely  connected,  hence  the  appearance  of  mu- 
tual isolation.  In  this  case,  however,  a  conscious 
and  reflective  connecting  of  the  two  selves  as  part 
of  one  self  followed  in  the  recollection  which  came 
after  the  girl  had  entered  the  store.  Such  a  con- 
scious establishment  of  connection  does  not  always 
occur. 

In  the  history  of  prayer  there  are  probably  many 
cases  of  the  kind  just  described,  in  which  a  mere  re- 
liance on  the  laws  of  subconscious  activity  does  the 
work,  and  in  which  the  alter  is  not  necessarily  of 
any  higher  ethical  value  than  the  me.  For  the  self 
to  which  petition  is  made  for  specific  objective  ends 
of  a  material  kind  is  not  necessarily  the  highest 
moral  self.  It  is  never,  in  fact,  upon  its  high  moral 
aspects  that  the  emphasis  is  being  laid  at  the  time 
of  petition.  It  is  merely  a  more  powerful,  more 
adequate  self  upon  which  the  me  relies.  It  is,  in 
the  cases  just  mentioned,  the  self  of  organized  habit 
in  relation  to  some  particularly  desired  event.  We 
should  hesitate  to  call  it  "the  subconscious  self", 
lest  we  should  seem  to  postulate  some  continuously 
existing  being  containing  in  itself  all  organized  hab- 
its and  containing  them  all  equally.  It  is  rather  a 
self  made  up,  not  of  all  organized  habits,  but  of 
certain  particular  organized  habits.     Which  habits 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER  53 

these  are,  which  part  of  the  subconscious  activities 
here  function  together  as  a  self,  depends  on  the  par- 
ticuhir  problem  in  hand. 

One  more  large  department  of  prayer  must  be 
noted,  before  we  pass  to  a  consideration  of  the  com- 
pletely social  type, — the  use  of  prayer  for  the  cure 
of  disease.  We  might  indeed  consider  this  use  of 
prayer  as  coming  under  the  completely  social  type, 
in  which  prayer  is  recognizably  used  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  wider  self.  In  that  case  we  should 
be  considering  disease  as  an  affection  of  the  "self", 
and  the  end  to  be  achieved  through  prayer  as  per- 
fect "wholeness"  in  eveiy  particular.  Bnt  there  is 
in  this  field  so  much  confusion  between  the  use  of 
"self"  to  designate  the  entire  psycho-physical  or- 
ganism and  its  use  for  an  organization  of  purposes 
and  desires  quite  sharply  discriminated  from  the 
"body",  that  it  seems  best  to  treat  these  cases  by 
themselves,  as  cases  in  which  the  distinctions  of 
personal  and  impersonal  means  and  personal  and 
impersonal  ends  are  not  yet  clearly  made. 

Prayer  for  the  cure  of  disease  has  been  almost 
universally  practised  in  primitive  religions.  This 
is  not  remarkable,  since  ])rayer,  including  under 
this  head  ceremony  as  well  as  verbal  statement,  was 
used  for  ever>^  variety  of  crisis.  Nor  is  it  surpris- 
ing that  prayer  should  have  been  used  for  this  pur- 
pose long  after  its  undiscriminating  application  to 
many  other  kinds  of  problems  ceased;  for  this  is  a 
more  unusual  problem  and  one  less  susceptible,  in 


54  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

the  state  of  primitive  science,  of  coming  under  uni- 
form treatment.  But  that  prayer  should  have  con- 
tinued to  our  own  day  as  a  recognized  means  of 
treatment  for  physical  ills,  is  somewhat  more  re- 
markable, and  would  seem  to  indicate  some  closer 
causal  connection  than  one  is  apt  to  assume  at  first 
sight.  Luther^  believed  in  prayer  for  the  sick;  he 
reports  that  it  had  in  his  own  experience  saved 
three  lives,  his  own,  his  wife's  and  a  friend's,  at  a 
time  when  they  were  ''nigh  unto  the  very  gates  of 
death",  St.  Augustine^  reports  the  cure  of  a  tooth- 
ache. Almost  every  religious  leader  who  has,  as  all 
religious  leaders  have,  lived  a  life  of  prayer,  reports 
cases  of  the  cure  of  disease  through  its  means, 

Andrew  Murray  tells  of  the  progress  of  healing 
by  prayer.-  ''At  first  it  took  him  eighteen  months  of 
much  prayer  and  labor  before  the  final  victory  was 
gained.  Afterwards  he  had  such  ease  of  access  to 
the  throne — that  when  letters  came  asking  for  prayer 
for  sick  people  he  could,  after  looking  upward  for 
a  single  moment,  obtain  the  answer  as  to  whether 
they  could  be  healed,"  While  we  may  quite  easily 
doubt  the  basis  of  this  extreme  confidence  in  each 
particular  case, — this  apparent  sureness  of  knowl- 
edge,— it  is  nevertheless  quite  true  that  cures  were 
effected.  It  is  important  to  note  in  these  cases  the 
growth  of  self-confidence  bj^  the  habitual  use  of 
prayer  for  healing,  and  the  growth  of  the  confidence 


'  cf.  Amer.  Jour,  of  ReJ.  Psych,  and  Edu.,  I,  1906,  p.  107. 
=  "With  Christ."  p.  126  et  seq. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  55 

of  the  people  who  came  to  be  healed.  The  first  ease 
took  him  eighteen  months;  afterwards  he  did  not 
need  so  much  time.  The  growth  of  confidence,  of 
"faith",  is  an  important  part  of  all  such  phenomena 
of  prayer  and  faith-healing. 

Torrey  relates  an  experience  of  cure  by  prayer.^ 
A  fit  of  illness  came  upon  him  when  alone  in  his 
study.  He  was  in  such  pain  that  he  was  unable  to 
arise  and  seek  help.  Fearing  lest  he  should  be  left 
alone  and  unaided  for  an  entire  night  unless  he  se- 
cured the  strength  to  care  for  himself,  he  prayed, 
and  in  a  few  moments  was  greatly  relieved.  Cases 
of  this  tj'pe  are  common,  not  only  in  the  printed 
biographies  of  religious  leaders,  but  in  the  lives  of 
some  of  the  friends  of  most  of  us,  sometimes  con- 
fessed, sometimes  not.  The  writer  knows  person- 
ally half  a  dozen  people  who  habitually  make  use  of 
]irayer  in  this  manner.  The  success  of  such  a  use 
rests  of  course  only  on  the  testimony  of  single  indi- 
viduals and  is  extremely  subjective  in  nature,  yet 
that  testimony  occurs  with  sufficient  frequency  to 
give  it  weight. 

There  are  also  more  "objective"  cases,  cases  in 
which  the  prayer  was  for  another  individual,  who, 
however,  knew  that  he  was  being  prayed  for.  ( There 
are  very  few  cases  mentioned  in  which  such  knowl- 
edge was  not  included  in  the  ]u-econditions  of  re- 
covery.) Father  John  Sergieff,  a  Russian  priest,  re- 


'  Torrey,  "How  to  Pra.v,"  p.  18. 


56  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYEE 

lates  such  occurrences  as  a  matter  of  course.  In 
''My  Life  in  Christ",  phrases  of  this  kind  are  fre- 
quent: "Paul  and  Olga,  in  accordance  with  my  un- 
worthy prayers,  have  been  cured  of  the  infirmity 
with  which  they  were  attacked. ' ' ' 

The  examples  hitherto  given  have  been  taken  from 
the  lives  of  people  who  laid  no  especial  emphasis  on 
faith-healing  as  a  part  of  their  creed.  They  show 
that  for  the  typical  religious  consciousness  of  the 
past  the  healing  of  disease  has  been  a  use  of  prayer 
frequently  taken  for  granted,  even  when  not  empha- 
sized as  a  ]>articnlarly  and  peculiarly  appropriate 
use. 

But  when  we  consider  the  tremendous  emphasis 
which  this  use  of  prayer  has  been  receiving  within 
the  last  few  years,  in  various  types  of  religious 
movements  from  Christian  Science  down," — and 
up;  when  we  I'ealize  that  for  many  people  and  many 
sects  it  has  become  the  most  vital  issue  in  religion 
at  the  present  moment;  then  we  see  that  this  form 
of  prayer  is  more  fundamentally  connected  with  the 
social  forms  which  we  shall  discuss  later,  than  is 
the  totally  undiscriminating  use  which  we  have  al- 
ready discussed.  The  exact  limits  of  its  application 
are  yet  to  be  determined.  Yet  here  also  our  thesis 
holds  good:  that  the  end  of  prayer  is  the  establish- 


'  Father  .Tolm   Sfi-oipff.  "]M.v  T-ifo  in  Christ."  p-  202. 

-  The  Emininmol  ]\[ovenieiit.  bpcinnin^  at  Emmanuel  Church,  Bos- 
ton, is  the  most  widesprearl  movement  takins;  place  ^Yithin  the  church 
itself,  and  in  connection  with  a  reroKnized  "orthodox"  religion.  See 
"Religion    and    Medicine,"    Emmanuel    Church    Publications.    Boston. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PEAYEK  0/ 

ment  of  a  larger  self.  The  unsolved  question  is  not 
so  much  with  regard  to  the  ultimate  aim  of  prayer 
as  with  regard  to  the  types  of  diseases  and  disord- 
ers which  shall  l)e  considered  affections  of  the 
"self".  And  here  we  find,  psychologically  and  thera- 
peutically, a  live  issue.  There  has  probably  never 
been  a  time  when  this  use  of  prayer  has  aroused 
more  public  discussion  than  at  the  present  day,  be- 
cause the  world  has  never  before  passed  through  an 
era  like  that  of  the  last  fifty  years,  in  which  all  de- 
])endence  on  mental  and  spiritual  means  in  the  cure 
of  disorders  was  so  rigorously  excluded.  Up  to  that 
time  those  who  used  prayer  used  it  as  a  matter  of 
course  and  with  little  discrimination,  in  connection 
with  other  means.  Now  the  whole  matter  is  under 
strenuous  discussion,  a  discussion  which  will  proba- 
bly result  in  more  adequate  distinctions  than  have 
as  yet  obtained  concerning  the  employment  of  prayer 
in  this  field. 

The  value  of  prayer  for  certain  parts  of  this  field 
is  not  at  all  hard  to  find.  Indeed  it  is  rather  sur- 
prising, in  view  of  the  great  use  which  has  been 
made  of  prayer  in  disease  and  the  greatness  of  its 
success  when  compared  with  the  use  of  prayer  for 
other  "material"  ends;  in  view  moreover  of  the 
closeness  of  the  connection  between  the  organism 
to  be  cured  and  the  consciousness  in  which  the 
prayer  or  the  faith  in  another's  prayer  arises; — it 
is  surprising  that  more  deductions  have  not  been 
made  from  these  two  facts  concerning  the  essential 


58  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

nature  of  prayer  as  a  means  arising  in  conscious- 
ness for  the  sake  of  the  development  of  that  con- 
sciousness. 

Three  things  must  be  briefly  mentioned  in  con- 
sidering the  psychological  connection  between 
prayer  and  health.  First,  that  an  attitude  of  confi- 
dence towards  the  universe,  an  absence  of  worry,  is 
an  element  in  all  perfect  health,  and  tends  to  pro- 
duce health  through  a  right  functioning  of  the 
psycho-physical  organism.  The  poisonous  effect  of 
the  depressing  emotions  is  too  well  known  to  need 
comment.  The  healthy  mood  is  the  mood  of  confi- 
dent action.  The  removal  of  perplexing  inhibitions 
makes  the  processes  of  life  move  more  easily.  The 
main  thing  for  health  is  that  these  processes  shall  be 
let  alone,  undisturbed  by  the  worries  which  arise, 
more  in  some  temperaments  than  in  others,  unless 
held  in  check  by  some  positive  confidence.  Confi- 
dence in  almost  anything  would  do.  Thus  we  find 
diseases  cured  by  prayers  and  religious  ceremonials 
in  religions  which  we  should  characterize  as  com- 
pletely non-ethical.  And  we  find  cures  produced  by 
other  types  of  confidence  than  the  religious. 

Closely  connected  with  this  negative  effect  of 
prayer  in  producing  a  confident  self,  is  the  positive 
stimulation  resulting  from  the  contemplation  of  a 
pleasurable  idea.  More  especially  the  sympathetic 
sharing  of  a  completer,  more  wholesome,  more  ade- 
quate life,  has  an  effect  like  that  of  a  stimulant  or 
tonic.    "The  object  is  to  absorb  the  consciousness  in 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  59 

the  thought  of  the  divine  presence,  since  no  other 
realization  is  therapeutically  so  effectual."' 

In  addition  to  the  purely  general  psychic  accom- 
paniments of  the  prayer-state,  we  must  notice  the 
perfectly  definite  effect  which  suggestion  of  all 
kinds  has  in  the  removal  of  certain  diseases.  It 
would  not  be  in  place  here  to  discuss  the  extent  of 
that  power.  In  fact,  we  should  hardly  have  gone  at 
all  into  this  brief  consideration  of  the  physiological 
effects  of  mental  states,  if  those  effects  had  not  re- 
ceived so  much  recent  emphasis  in  connection  with 
religious  movements.  The  relation  of  prayer  to 
health  is  as  yet  incompletely  determined.  Any  dis- 
ease at  all  affected  by  the  nervous  condition  comes 
of  course  well  within  its  province.  That  is  to  say, 
any  problem  which  is  ''social"  in  nature,  which  de- 
mands for  its  solution  the  establishment  of  a  differ- 
ent self,  is  a  problem  which  comes  within  the  field 
of  prayer,  as  we  have  defined  it. 

Yet  we  have  not  included  this  form  of  prayer 
among  the  completely  developed  forms  for  the  rea- 
son that  neither  the  scientific  nor  the  ethical  discrim- 
inations discussed  in  the  preceding  section  have  as 
yet  succeeded  in  placing  it  there.  From  the  stand- 
point of  the  scientific  discrimination,  the  exact  limits 
of  the  efficiency  of  prayer  in  this  field  are  unde- 
termined. x\nd  from  the  standpoint  of  the  ethical 
discrimination  we  must  notice  the  fact  that  this  par- 


*  H.  W.  Dresser,  ^'Health  and  the  Inner  Life."  p.  203. 


60  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYEE 

ticular  type  of  prayer  does  not  of  necessity  posit  a 
self  of  higher  ethical  value  than  the  me.  We  have 
already  seen  that  a  confidence  of  almost  any  sort 
will  do  the  work.  For  the  result  depends  princi- 
pally upon  the  extent  to  which  the  immediate  self  of 
depression,  anxiety  and  low  vitality  can  be  given  up. 
''To  lose  self  that  we  may  find  it  is,  in  fact,  the  es- 
sence of  spiritual  healing;  for  invariably  there  is 
too  great  consciousness  of  self  whenever  there  is  ill- 
ness and  trouble.'" 

Yet  it  must  not  be  inferred  that  the  nature  of  the 
alter  in  the  relation  does  not  in  any  way  affect  the 
result.  The  more  strongly  joyous,  the  more  potent, 
the  more  confidently  healthful  the  life  thus  shared 
through  contemplation  or  suggestion,  the  more  will 
the  resultant  self  possess  those  qualities,  and  the 
greater  will  be  the  tonic  etfect  upon  the  nervous 
organism.  And  for  an  ethical  religion  there  has 
been  established  in  the  minds  of  a  majority  of  peo- 
ple an  intrinsic  connection  between  the  morally  ideal 
self  and  the  ideally  powerful  self.  Due  to  this  as- 
sociation at  least,  if  to  no  more  fundamental  con- 
nection, the  relation  with  the  morally  and  religiously 
ideal  self  has  a  peculiarly  important  place  in  the 
field  which  we  have  been  discussing.  It  is  also  due 
to  this  association  that  prayers  for  the  cure  of  dis- 
ease frequently  result,  in  the  case  of  an  ethical  re- 
ligion, in  moral  and  religious  gains.     Thus  Torrey, 

)-.   -'."yimm 

^H.  W.  Dresser,  "Health  and  the  Inner  Life,"  p.  203. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  61 

in  the  incident  quoted  above,  concludes:  "The  joy 
of  the  healing  was  not  so  great  as  the  joy  of  thus 
meeting  God.'" 

This  leads  at  once  to  the  consideration  of  the 
fully  discriminating  type  of  prayer. 

IV 

THE  COMPLETELY  SOCIAL  TYPE  OF  PRAYER.      ITS  GENERAL 

CHARACTERISTICS 

''It  would  be,"  says  Herrmann,  "a  shameful  mis- 
use of  prayer,  if  trifles  which  have  really  no  signifi- 
cance for  our  inner  life  were  to  be  made  the  objects 
of  our  prayers."  This  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  at- 
titude taken  by  the  discriminating  religious  con- 
sciousness toward  any  other  use  of  prayer  than  the 
social  one  of  establisliing  a  wider  self.  This  atti- 
tude is  not,  as  we  have  already  indicated,  the  result 
of  a  definite  removal  of  prayer  from  certain  well 
defined  fields  in  which  it  was  formerly  employed; 
the  earlier  forms  of  prayer  were  undiscriminatingly 
social;  but  with  greater  discrimination  has  come 
greater  definiteness  in  the  content  implied  by  a  com- 
pleter and  wider  self. 

The  imaginative  social  process,  of  which  prayer 
is  an  example,  is  the  one  means  to  this  enlargement 
of  the  self.  "There  is  no  possibility  of  being  good," 
says  Cooley,  "without  living,  imaginatively  of 
course,  in  good  company."     "Mankind  needs  the 


Torrey,   "How   to  Pray,"   p.   18. 


62  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   PRAYER 

highest  vision  of  personality,  and  needs  it  clear  and 
vivid,  and  in  the  lack  of  it  will  suffer  a  lack  in  the 
clearness  and  cogency  of  moral  thought."^  The 
end  of  all  personal  association  is  just  this — the  es- 
tablishment of  a  larger  self.  Emerson's  criterion  of 
friendship  holds  throughout:  "The  only  joy  I  have 
in  his  being  mine  is  that  the  not-mine  is  mine. — 
There  must  be  very  two  before  there  can  be  very 
one,"  The  self  lives  and  grows  only  through  this 
continual  incorporation  into  itself  of  new  selves. 
"The  ideal  persons  of  religion  are  not  fundament- 
ally diiferent,  psychologically  or  sociologically,  from 
other  persons.  So  far  as  they  work  on  life,  they  are 
real,  with  immediate  social  reality."  For  "the  im- 
mediate social  reality  is  the  personal  idea".  "The 
vaguely  material  notion  of  personality,  which  does 
not  confront  the  social  fact  at  all  but  assumes  it  to 
be  the  analogue  of  the  physical  fact,  is  a  main  source 
of  fallacious  thinking  about  ethics,  politics,  etc. — It 
is  the  mental  fact  that  we  love  or  hate  and  that  in- 
fluences us."  "All  our  conceptions  of  personality 
are  one  in  kind,  as  being  imaginative  interpretations 
of  experience,"^  in  the  form  of  selves  arising  in 
consciousness. 

The  value  of  the  association  with  the  morally  ideal 
self  has  been  felt  so  intensely  by  religious  writers 
that  many  of  them  have  sought  to  limit  the  imagina- 
tive social  process  to  this  one  relation,  by  shutting 


'  Cooley,  "Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order,"  p.  371. 
-  Ibid.,  pp.  281,  89,  98, 


PSYCHOLOGY   (^F   PRAYER  63 

out  other  companions.  *' Desire  to  be  familiar  only 
with  God  and  His  angels,"  says  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
"and  flee  the  society  of  men." ' 

St.  Teresa  mentions  three  things  as  necessary  for 
obtaining  perfection  in  prayer.^  First,  love  for  one 
another;  second,  "disengagement  from  every  creat- 
ure"; third,  humility.  More  admirably  efficient 
means  from  the  psychological  point  of  view  could 
hardl}^  have  been  devised.  First,  create  a  need  for 
companionship  by  emphasizing  the  social  nature  of 
the  self;  second,  deprive  this  need  of  its  usual  satis- 
faction, that  all  the  energy  of  desire  may  go  into  the 
outlet  which  is  allowed.  Third,  determine  the  outlet 
which  this  companion-seeking  shall  take  by  assum- 
ing an  attitude  of  mind  which  could  only  admit  as 
alter  a  self  great  enough  to  inspire  "humility". 

In  view  of  the  emphasis  already  given  by  modern 
psychologists  to  the  social  nature  of  the  self,  we 
hardly  need  to  state  further  that  the  self  lives  only 
in  companionship,  and  that  praj^er  is  one  expression 
of  the  constant  social  intercourse  through  which  con- 
sciousness goes  on.  The  shadowy  beginnings  of 
such  a  social  intercourse,  in  the  consciousness  of  a 
woman  who  had  spent  most  of  her  life  in  the  auto- 
matic performance  of  "impersonal"  tasks,  is  ad- 
mirably expressed  by  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps:''  "  'I 
see  it  now,'  she  said  aloud  to  the  only  consciousness 


'  "Imitation  of  Christ."'  ch.  S. 

-"The  Way  of  Perfection,"  p.  23  et.  seq. 

'"His  Sovil  to  Keep."  in  Harpers,  1908,  September,  p.  501. 


G-i  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   PRAYER 

she  could  address  on  so  intimate  a  topic. — By  de- 
grees, very  quietly  but  very  plainly,  it  had  become 
apparent  to  the  denied  woman  that  something  an- 
swered; not  always,  not  explicitly,  but  sometime 
and  in  some  way.  She  had  begun  to  be  aware  of  a 
soft  encroachment  upon  her  loneliness,  a  movement 
of  spirit  toward  her  own.  She  did  not  go  so  far  as  to 
call  it  an  interchange  of  intelligence ;  she  was  chiefly 
conscious  of  it  as  a  delicate  blender  of  feeling  blur- 
ring the  outlines  of  her  solitude." 

But  the  religious  consciousness  does  not  stop  with 
this  indefinite  "blurring  of  solitude".  It  goes  on  to 
a  much  more  definite  social  relation  with  a  much 
more  definite  alter.  Its  "method  of  forming  an  ideal 
of  God  is  to  take  the  highest  and  most  purified  affec- 
tions, and  the  noblest  moral  sentiments,  and  con- 
ceive of  the  Divine  nature  through  them."  And 
with  the  self  thus  conceived,  it  enters  into  com- 
munion. ' '  Confession,  supplication,  thanksgiving  and 
praise  all  go  and  blend  to  form  the  great  whole."  ^ 
"I  can  imagine  some  to  object,"  says  Granger,  "that 
God  can  never  be  so  realized  by  us  as  to  be  the  ob- 
ject of  love  in  the  same  way  human  beings  are.  The 
reason  is  plain;  such  persons  regard  God  as  an  in- 
tellectual ideal."-  And  the  answer  is  equally  plain; 
the  religious  consciousness  does  actually  succeed  in 
regarding  God,  and  in  making  use  of  him,  as  friend, 
judge,  inspiration,  companion  in  every  sense. 


'  Beecher.  "A  Ti-easuiy  of  Illustration."  pp.  241,  383. 
==  Granger,  "The  Soul  of  a  Christian,"  p.  190. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  65 

A  few  of  the  ways  in  which  this  social  relation- 
ship is  used  must  be  noticed.  Augustine  finds  com- 
fort and  strength  in  suffering  through  the  thought: 
"Thou  didst  know  what  I  was  suffering  and  no  man 
knew.  Thou  findest  pleasure  in  us  and  so  regard- 
est  each  of  us  as  though  Thou  hadst  him  alone  to 
care  for.  "^  Browning  makes  David  bring  Saul  back 
to  the  uses  of  life  by  promising  him : 

■'A  face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee ;  a  man  like  to  me 
Thou  slialt  lo\('  and  be  loved  hy  forever;  a  hand  like  this  hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  siates  of  new  life  to  thee." 

Gates,  in  a  devotional  book  entitled  ''The  Sorrow 
of  God",  lays  great  stress  on  the  fact  that  ''He  is 
touched  with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities",  and 
asks  "what  the  practical  value  of  such  a  truth  is". 
He  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  "the  essence 
of  consolation".  It  changes  the  whole  situation  "to 
know  that  God  is  not  indifferent  to  the  tragedy  but 
is  involved  in  the  suffering".-'  On  the  other  hand, 
the  psalmist  in  one  place"  finds  his  chief  consolation 
in  the  fact  that  God  is  untouched  by  his  sufferings, 
because  so  infinitely  greater  than  they.  This  latter 
type  of  attitude  will  he  taken  up  in  greater  detail 
later.  But  the  difference  between  the  two  may  be 
briefly  noticed  here.  In  the  former  case,  the  suf- 
fering self,  the  me,  which  may  mean  simply  a  nar- 
rowly individual   pain  or  a  wider  sense  of  all  the 


'Augustine,  "Confessions."  12:7:  3:11. 
=  Gates.  "The  Sorrow  of  God."  pp.  6,  7. 
'Psalm  101'. 


6Q  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

tragedy  contained  in  human  existence,  is  prominent 
enough  in  the  conflict  to  color  the  finally  resulting 
self  very  strongly.  God  must  overcome  the  suffer- 
ing not  simply  by  blotting  it  out  of  the  realm  of 
facts  worth  noticing, — the  me  is  too  insistent  for 
such  a  result  to  be  possible, — but  by  sharing  it  and 
still  overcoming  it  in  a  large  reality.  Yet  the  desired 
comfort  is  obtained  in  both  cases  through  a  par- 
ticipation in  a  life  greater  than  the  suifering,  be- 
cause capable,  in  the  one  case  of  ignoring  it,  and  in 
the  other  of  containing  it  without  being  overwhelmed 
by  it. 

The  fundamental  desire  to  share  an  emotion  is  not 
even  entirely  dependent  on  a  rational  belief  in  the 
possibility  of  response.  A  man  who  believes  that 
there  is  no  response  may  cease,  and  must,  as  a  ra- 
tional being,  cease,  from  the  overt  attempt  to  com- 
municate; but  he  will  feel  the  need  of  communica- 
tion none  the  less,  and  times  of  crisis  may  become 
too  strong  for  his  rational  processes.  As  Voltaire 
said:  "If  there  were  no  Grod,  we  should  have  to 
create  one."  For  "thought,  especially  vivid 
thought,  tends  irresistibly  to  take  on  the  fonn  of 
communication".^  This  is  its  normal  outlet.  A 
man  will  talk  to  an  utterly  indifferent  listener  merely 
for  the  sake  of  working  off  the  emotion  which  is 
bothering  him.  Prayers  of  confession  could  fre- 
quently be  brought  under  this  type  of  classification 


^Gooley,  p.  57. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER  67 

■ — the  alter  furnishing  a  mere  listener.  But  in  an 
ethical  religion  a  prayer  of  confession  usually  passes 
over  into  another  type  of  relation  in  which  the  alter 
serves  the  function  of  moral  authority  and  judge. 

For  the  relief  thus  exi)erieuced  in  mere  self- 
expression  is  by  no  means  continuously  satisfying 
to  the  normal  human  being.  As  we  have  remarked, 
he  craves  the  response  of  a  genuine  social  relation- 
ship. So  when  Cooley,  in  his  discussion  of  the  real- 
ity of  personal  ideas,  says  that  "a  favorite  author 
is  more  with  us  in  his  book  than  he  could  have  been 
in  the  flesh;  we  therefore  do  not  desire  intercourse 
with  him",'  he  overlooks  this  desire  for  response 
which  is,  for  some  temperaments  at  least,  an  inte- 
gral part  of  a  personal  relationship.  It  is  true  that 
as  far  as  getting  a  definite  contribution  of  new  ideas, 
actual  intercourse  with  the  author  might  give  us 
nothing,  yet  there  is  in  the  minds  of  most  of  us  a 
feeling  of  being  a  little  cheated  if  we  are  compelled 
by  an  author's  books  to  feel  a  really  personal  love 
for  him,  because  we  realize  the  impossibility  of  mak- 
ing him  feel  the  same  for  us.  There  is  a  recognition 
of  our  own  ])rivate  selves,  our  own  particular  point 
of  view,  wliich  we  want  and  do  not  get.  The  best 
we  can  do  is  to  share  our  enthusiasm  over  the  au- 
thor's brilliant  passages  with  some  other  friend, 
and  we  feel  lost  indeed  if  this  consolation  is  denied 
us.    This  fact  indicates  the  character  of  any  social 


» Ibid.,  p.  82. 


68  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

relation  in  which  the  me  is  a  noticeable  factor  and 
is  yet  not  self-sufficient.  There  is  a  demand  for 
response.  So  in  a  letter  recently  sent  to  a  theo- 
logical school  in  answer  to  a  circular  describing  the 
course  of  study,  a  man  enumerated  as  chief  among 
the  things  on  which  he  desired  to  know  the  best 
modern  thought,  the  question  "A^^iether  there  is 
any  answer  to  prayer  other  than  that  supplied  by 
the  individual's  own  imagination".  If  there  is  no 
belief  in  such  a  response,  a  vast  number  of  indi- 
viduals cease  to  pray,  in  spite  of  the  numerous 
spiritual  advantages  which  they  know  will  accrue 
from  the  practice. 

The  religious  consciousness  posits  a  real  social 
relation,  and  for  that  relation  it  finds  many  uses. 
We  have  noticed  several,  none  of  which  has,  except 
by  implication,  demanded  an  ethically  ideal  self  as 
alter.  Such  a  demand  is,  however,  a  very  prominent 
one.  A  recent  writer  in  the  Congregationalist^  ex- 
presses the  need  of  the  religious  consciousness  for 
such  an  ideal  self.  ' '  If  the  meditations  of  mv  heart 
constitute  the  one  place  where  I  may  deal  inclu- 
sively with  my  life,  is  there  any  one  great  test  to 
which  I  may  subject  my  meditations?  I  cannot  test 
them  by  the  judgment  of  my  friends,  even  the  most 
intimate.  I  want  some  authoritative,  searching,  just 
and  vastly  compassionate  test; — objective  in  that 
its  standards  are  without  and  above  me;  subjective 


*  Congregationalist.     1908,  Sept.  12,  G.  G.  Atkins. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  69 

in  that  it  reaches  depths  deeper  than  my  own  self- 
knowledge."  Such  a  test  is  found  in  the  jiulgnient 
])assed  bv  the  morally  ideal  alter. 

A  few  more  prayers  expressive  of  this  need  of 
companionship  may  be  noticed,  before  ])assing  on 
In  a  more  definite  inspection  and  classification  of 
tlie  prayers  of  the  developed  religious  conscious- 
ness. I  will  take  three  characteristic  examples  from 
Mrs.  Tileston's  collection  of  prayers.^ 

"0  Thou  Author  of  all  good, — may  Thy  mercies 
be  our  daily  song  and  may  the  light  of  Thy  counte- 
nance in  this  world  of  power  and  beauty  move  our 
hearts  to  great  thankfulness  and  a  sweet  trust." 
Tn  this  the  joy  of  social  intercourse  is  touched  also 
with  the  delight  of  jpsthetic  contemplation,  Tn  the 
following  prayer  of  Christina  Hossetti's,  the  need 
of  companionship  is  more  unmixed :  "0  Lord,  show 
forth  Thy  loving  kindness,  I  entreat  Thee,  to  all 
liersons  who  in  this  world  feel  themselves  neglected, 
or  little  loved,  or  forgotten.  Be  Thou  their  beloved 
companion,  and  let  communion  with  Thee  be  to  them 
more  dear  than  tenderest  earthly  intercourse."  And 
the  following  prayer  by  George  Matheson :  "Lord, 
T  thank  Thee  for  Thy  constraining  love.  I  thank 
T1ioe  that  Thou  art  not  re])elled  hy  my  bitteniess, 
that  Thou  :irt  not  turned  aside  by  the  heat  of  my 
spirit.  There  is  no  force  in  the  universe  so  glorious 
as  the  force  of  Thy  love;  it  compels  me  to  come  in." 


'  >rrs.   Tiloston.   "Prayois   .\n<ioiif   an<l    :\[oflorn."   i>.   2aS.    K.   Ellis: 
l>.  207.  Christina   Rossetti  :  p.  21."..  George  Matlitson 


70 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PKAYER 


The  Hymns  of  the  Veda  express  some  of  this  joy 
in  personal  association,  in  a  poetic  fashion  which 
is  yet  marked  by  some  of  the  earlier,  more  ma- 
terialistic conceptions  of  worship. 

''0  Indra,  lover  of  the  song;  our  chants  have 
strengthened  thee."  "Indra,  whose  succour  never 
fails,  accept  these  viands  thousand-fold,  wherein  all 
manly  powers  abide."  "Come,  Indra,  and  delight 
thee  with  the  juice  at  all  the  soma  feasts."  "Take 
pleasure  in  our  friendship  and  drink-offerings." 
"Him,  him  we  seek  for  friendship,  him  for  riches 
and  heroic  might.  "^ 

There  is  no  need  to  repeat  examples  of  this  type 
of  prayer;  they  can  he  found  everywhere.  In  fact, 
the  use  of  prayer  for  the  sake  of  a  pleasant  com- 
panionship enjoved  as  an  end  in  itself,  has  been 
almost  too  exclusively  recognized  by  certain  psy- 
chological writers,  notably  in  the  discussion  of  the 
relation  between  sex  and  religion.  Such  exclusive 
emphasis  on  the  closeness  of  that  relation  overlooks 
not  only  the  fact  that  every  existing  type  of  per- 
sonal association  finds  some  type  of  prayer  as  cor- 
relate, but  also  the  fact  that  a  very  large  depart- 
ment of  prayer  is  made  use  of,  not  as  an  end  in 
itself,  but  solely  to  emphasize  the  moral  judgment 
and  to  further  moral  action. 

To  conclude:  in  the  cases  here  mentioned  we 
have  seen  how  prayer  is  a  means  in  the  establish- 


^  Griffith,  "Hymns  of  the  Rigreda,"  V,  IX,  X. 


■       PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  71 

ment  of  a  larger  self,  a  self  more  strong  to  bear 
snft'ering,  a  self  more  open  to  the  beauty  of  the 
universe,  a  self  more  widely  "social''.  This  self 
has  arisen,  as  all  selves  arise,  out  of  a  social  rela- 
tion between  a  me  and  an  alter,  the  me  representing 
a  need  and  a  desire,  and  the  alter  the  means  of  its 
satisfaction.  We  have  called  this  type  of  prayer  a 
completely  social  type,  because  in  it  the  conception 
of  what  we  mean  by  a  self  has  developed  at  least 
as  far  for  the  jjrayer  relation  as  it  has  developed 
for  the  other  personal  relations  of  life.  We  have 
a  distinctly  social  end  proposed  and  a  social  process 
as  means ;— the  normal  means  for  the  end  desired. 

We  will  next  consider  more  closel.y  the  different 
tendencies  which  may  be  distinguished  within  this 
completely  social  type. 


THE  TWO  TENDENCIES  TN  THE  COMPLETELY  SOCIAL  TYPE. 
THE  CONTEMPLATIVE  OR  "  AESTHETIC  " 

In  every  social  relation  there  are  two  tendencies. 
One  is  the  tendency  to  enjoy  all  the  possibilities  of 
the  relation,  to  obtnin  the  largest  emotional  expres- 
sion; we  shall  call  this  the  contemplative  or  resthetic 
tendency,  since  it  rests  content  with  the  apprecia- 
tion of  an  object  without  attempting  to  employ  it 
for  a  definite  end.  There  is  also,  however,  a  ten- 
dency to  use  as  little  as  possible  of  the  social  con- 
tent and  to  pass  on  into  action ;  this  we  shall  call 
the  practical  tendency.    In  prayer,  as  in  every  social 


72  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

act,  these  tendencies  are  present:  one  to  make 
prayer  an  end  in  itself,  and  the  other  to  make  it 
a  quick  bridge  to  moral  action. 

Herrmann  says:  ''In  the  struggle  of  a  prayer 
that  really  comes  before  God,  joy  in  God  necessarily 
pushes  into  the  place  that  was  at  first  filled  with 
passionate  desire,  and  so  such  desire  is  moderated. 
The  natural  desire  that  is  born  of  the  passion  of 
the  creature  and  the  joy  in  God  and  His  will  which 
He  Himself  awakens,  must  be  blended  together  in 
a  Christian  prayer. — But  no  advice,  however  care- 
ful, can  direct  us  how  to  balance  the  two  in  any 
individual  instance.'"  It  must  be  noted  that  in  the 
case  of  the  prayers  we  are  considering,  the  desire 
is  an  ethical  one.  and  that  the  question  then  be- 
comes how  to  maintain  the  proper  balance  between 
the  aesthetic  and  emotional  enjoyment  of  the  prayer- 
experience  itself,  and  the  strictly  practical  employ- 
ment of  prayer  as  an  aid  to  action.  The  proper 
proportion  of  wor«ihip  and  service  is  an  old  prob- 

fn  in  religion. 
We  notice  at  once  this  psychological  distinction. 
When  the  me  is  relatively  exhausted,  possessing  no 
very  definite  desire  save  possibly  the  desire  for  rest, 
the  prayer  is  apt  to  pass  into  an  aesthetic  absorp- 
tion, a  contemplative  enjoyment.  We  find  this  type 
very  strongly  in  the  mystics,  and  in  men  and  women 
who  have  retired  from  the  world  and  who  conse- 


^  Herrmaun.  "Communiou  with  God,"  p.  341. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER  73 

quently  do  not  feel  the  pressure  of  the  immediate 
life  of  action  with  its  demands  and  desires.  The 
me  seeks  only  to  lose  itself  in  the  alter,  and  no 
definite  conrse  of  condnet  need  be  the  result  of  the 
prayer.  Peace,  rest  and  recuperation  are  sought 
and  obtained. 

When,  however,  the  me  brings  to  the  relation  a 
strongly  defined  desire,  asking  only  moral  evalua- 
tion, sanction  and  encouragement  for  that  desire, 
prayer  merges  almost  immediately  into  action.  This 
is  the  type  of  prayer  found  among  the  more  self- 
reliant  characters,  or  at  least  in  the  more  self-reliant 
moods.  And  these  two  types  of  prayer  seem  about 
evenly  divided.  Out  of  a  number  of  respondents 
examined  by  Coe,^  thirty-seven  named  the  results  of 
prayer  and  the  religious  life  as  consisting  of  ''vari- 
ous kinds  of  satisfactory  feeling",  while  forty  men- 
tioned ''help,  invigoration  of  the  will  or  something- 
connected  with  duty".  Tt  is  these  forty  who,  as  we 
saw  in  the  last  section,  are  almost  entirely  left  out 
of  account  by  those  writers  who  make  a  too  exclu- 
sive correlation  of  religion  and  sex-feeling. 

These  two  types  must  not  be  taken  as  mutually 
exclusive  or  even  as  rigidly  exact  divisions.  The 
prayers  mentioned  in  the  last  section  might  many 
of  them  belong  to  either  type.  The  (piestion  is 
rather  a  question  of  degree,  consisting  in  the  rela- 
tive emphasis  on  the  two  tendencies  in  any  social 
act,  the  aesthetic  and  the  practical. 

»Coe,  "The  Spiritual  Life."  p.  254. 


74  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PKAYER 

We  will  take  up  here  a  consideration  of  the  first 
of  these  two  types  of  prayer,  reserving  the  second 
for  the  next  section.  And  we  shall  notice  how  each 
of  the  types  passes,  at  its  extreme,  altogether  out  of 
the  social  relationship,  in  the  one  case  by  giving  up 
the  self  of  desire,  and  in  the  other  case  by  passing 
so  quickly  from  desire  to  action  that  a  real  social 
process  can  hardly  be  said  to  take  place.  Thus  in 
one  direction  we  reach  a  pure  esthetic  contempla- 
tion, in  which  the  me  is  lost;  in  the  other  a  mere 
moral  action,  in  which  the  alter  is  lost. 

From  one  point  of  view  the  aesthetic  satisfaction 
may  not  appear  altogether  social  in  nature.  One 
may  obtain  this  kind  of  satisfaction,  it  is  argued, 
from  a  beautiful  flower  or  a  lovely  sunset,  or  any 
''impersonal"  object.  The  relationship  need  not  be 
a  social  one.  But,  as  is  being  pointed  out  by  the 
"Einfuhlings-theorie"  at  present  agitated  in  Ger- 
many by  Lipps  and  others,  the  satisfaction  we  get 
in  such  a  case  is  not  a  satisfaction  in  the  object  as 
impersonal,  as  dead  object;  it  is  rather  a  satisfac- 
tion produced  by  the  reading  of  some  specialized 
fragment  of  our  own  life  into  the  object,  and  an 
enjoyment  of  the  harmonious  organization  of  the 
self  thus  projected.  Harmony,  order,  unity  in  dif- 
ference, are  social  categories,  applicable  only  in  re- 
lations in  consciousness,  that  is  to  say,  as  we  have 
already  pointed  out,  in  relations  of  selves.  Even 
the  appreciation  of  the  sublime,  as  Kant  shows,  is 
an  appreciation  of  a  social  relation,  an  appreciation 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  75 

of  the  transcendent  magnitude  of  the  "rational" 
self  as  over  against  the  "sensible"  self.  It  is 
"pleasurable  to  find  every  standard  of  Sensibility 
inadequate  to  the  Ideas  of  Understanding"/  This 
"respect  for  our  own  destination"  we  attribute  "by 
a  certain  subre]ition"  to  the  objects  of  nature. 

Even  that  scientific-a\sthetic  pleasure  in  the  or- 
ganization of  the  universe  which  is  quite  consciously 
disconnected  from  any  religious  significance  and 
whicli  may  make  a  deliberate  attempt  to  get  rid  of 
social  meaning  altogether,  delighting  solely  in  the 
accuracy  of  measurement  and  the  beauty  of  definite 
calculation  and  rejecting  any  such  practical  concep- 
tion as  that  of  design  and  designer, — even  this  does 
not  succeed  in  getting  rid  of  the  social  aspect  of 
aesthetic  enjoyment.  The  satisfaction  reached  is  a 
satisfaction  in  the  order  and  harmony  which  the 
scientist  has  himself  succeeded  in  creating  out  of 
the  mass  of  facts  hurled  at  him;  a  satisfaction  in 
the  completeness  of  his  organizing  power.  For  how- 
ever little  we  may  take  any  idealistic  interpretation 
of  the  nature  of  material  facts  as  facts,  the  world 
which  the  scientist  points  out  and  in  which  he  takes 
satisfaction  is  a  world  produced  by  consciousness, 
the  result  of  a  very  complex  organization  of  num- 
berless past  selves  of  the  scientist  into  a  coherent 
whole.  His  "purposiveness  without  purpose", — for 
that  is   indeed  the  proper  characterization   of  his 


Kant.  "Kritik  of  .Tudgmont."  trans,  b.v  J.  H.  Bernard,  p.  119. 


k 


76  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

world  of  organized  law  without  definite  design, — 
is  not  something  foreign  to  the  purpose  he  rejects, 
but  rather  a  highly  conscious  and  highly  specialized 
development  out  of  that  very  categorj^. 

If  the  aesthetic  satisfaction  is  thus  so  personal 
when  put  consciously  in  the  ''impersonal"  form,  it 
is  much  more  so  in  the  average  religious  conscious- 
ness. For  the  religious  person  even  the  enjo^Tuent 
felt  in  a  sunset  may  contain  a  conscious  reference  to 
the  activity  of  another  self.  This  may  var^^  all  the 
way  from  a  crudely  material  objectification  of  the 
other  self,  as  of  the  child  who  thinks,  as  the  writer 
has  been  told  by  two  children,  that  God,  represented 
as  a  man  above  the  sky,  makes  cracks  through  the 
floor  of  heaven  whenever  there  is  lightning,  to  the 
"subjective"  attitude  of  Berkeley,  who  thought  of 
the  physical  universe  as  an  impression  given  directly 
to  our  spirits  by  the  spirit  of  God.  Or  the  concept  of 
God  may  be  a  more  immanent  one  than  this  view 
of  Berkeley's  suggests,  and  the  satisfaction  experi- 
enced more  like  that  of  the  above-mentioned  scien- 
tist, a  satisfaction  in  the  sudden  expansion  of  a  nar- 
rower self  into  the  larger  self  of  creative  percep- 
tion and  imagination.  In  any  of  these  cases  the  sat- 
isfaction is  a  social  satisfaction,  an  enjoyment  in  the 
increase  of  life  through  contemplative  sharing  in  the 
life  of  a  wider  self. 

Of  this  particular  type  of  relation,  taken  in  the 
field  of  religion  and  of  prayer,  the  Buddhist  contem- 
plation  gives   the   most   extreme    example.      Many 


PSYCHOLOGY   (U-'   PEAYER  77 

classifications  of  religions  deny  that  Buddhism  has, 
strictly  speaking,  any  prayer  connected  with  it;  the 
place  of  prayer  being  taken  by  what  is  termed  "med- 
itation". Even  ill  the  so-called  "prayer- wheels", 
the  particular  phrase  most  often  used  is  simply  a 
phrase  of  adoration:  '"Om,  Mami  Padme,  hung", 
translated  by  VV.  Simpson  as  "Adoration  to  the 
Jewel  in  the  Lotus,  Amen",  a  sentence  of  highly 
mystical,  symbolic  meaning.  And  in  the  Buddhist 
Suttas  this  type  of  exercise  is  prescribed  for  the 
man  who  would  be  religious:  "Let  him  be  devoted 
to  that  quietude  of  heart  which  springs  from  within, 
let  him  not  drive  back  the  ecstasy  of  contemplation, 
let  him  look  through  things,  let  him  be  much  alone."" 
If  prayer  is  to  be  confined  to  a  definite  asking  of 
particular  benefits,  or  even  to  a  consciously  assumed 
relationship  between  two  selves,  this  type  of  reli- 
gious exercise  cannot  be  classed  as  prayer.  It  seems 
as  anti-social  as  the  Nirvana  of  the  Buddhist  seems 
anti-conscious.  But  the  contradiction  of  terms  in- 
volved in  an  "enjoyment  of  nothingness"  has  been 
pointed  out  too  often  to  need  further  discussion. 
Lnconsciousness  can  only  be  experienced  and  en- 
joyed as  a  state  of  relative  peace  after  the  weari- 
ness of  a  conscious  being.  In  the  same  way,  the 
Buddhist  contemplation  is  no  transcending  of  social 
relationships.     The  alter  is  a  more  highly  abstract 


"  Simpf5on,   "Bucklhist  Praying  Wheel."   p.  28. 

=  Max    Mtiller,    "Sacreil    Books   of    the   East."      XI,   The   Buddhist 
Suttas,  p.  211. 


78  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYEE 

self,  but  it  is  still  a  self.  The  end  sought  is  rest, 
that  rest  which  comes  to  the  self  of  immediate  de- 
sire through  appreciative  sharing  in  a  self  which 
symbolizes  the  movements  of  infinite  ages  of  time, 
— the  self  of  widest  aesthetic  contemplation.  For, 
as  we  have  remarked  above,  the  Buddhist  form  of 
meditation  is  the  type  of  "prayer"  which  most  re- 
sembles the  aesthetic  experience,  and  like  that  ex- 
perience it  is  best  interpreted  as  a  social  relation, 
by  means  of  the  doctrine  of  Einfiihlimg  already  dis- 
cussed. 

This  type  of  prayer-relation  is  not  confined  to 
Buddhism.  It  marks  the  completion  of  the  mystic 
ecstasy  in  any  form.  It  is  what  St.  Teresa  calls  the 
"stage  of  contemplation".  It  is  a  stage  which  has 
passed  beyond  the  strife  of  selves. 

For  the  time  being,  the  alter  completely  dominates 
the  consciousness.  If  the  me,  the  self  of  definite 
purpose  and  striving,  is  sufficiently  given  up,  there 
ceases,  for  the  time  being,  to  be  any  distinction  of 
objective  or  subjective.  For  as  we  saw  above,^  this 
distinction  only  arises  when  the  activities  of  on- 
going consciousness  meet  some  check  which  calls 
out  a  dualism  between  a  purpose  and  a  conditioning 
means.  In  the  mood  of  aesthetic  contemplation  there 
is  no  such  check.  The  extreme  of  this  mode  of  con- 
sciousness is  the  mystic  trance,  or  unconsciousness, 
due  to  a  complete  absence  of  the  conflict  which  is 


'  Section  I. 


PSYCHOLOGY    (;!•'    PRAYER  79 

essential  to  conscious  life.  Thus  this  type  of  prayer 
reaches  its  final  limit  first  in  aesthetic  contempla- 
tion and  finally  in  complete  absence  of  conscious- 
ness. We  shall  find  a  similar  limit  reached  in  the 
other  type  of  prayer  which  we  shall  consider  later. 

Consciousness  returns  again  after  the  mystic 
trance  as  soon  as  the  life-activities  meet  with  a 
check.  This  may  be  due  to  some  external  interrup- 
tion or  to  needs  of  the  organism.  The  self  which 
finally  issues  to  meet  the  next  conflict  is  determined, 
not  by  the  fact  that  there  has  been  a  trance  or  a 
sleep,  but  by  the  nature  of  the  last  two  selves  and 
the  relations  sustained  by  them.  It  follows  that  any 
ethical  value  which  may  be  attributed  to  the  mystic 
trance  is  to  be  accorded  to  it  on  account  of  effects 
produced  in  the  resulting  self,  rather  than  on  the 
ground  of  the  trance  itself.  Neither  is  it  to  be  con- 
demned on  that  ground. 

There  are  many  prayers  which  do  not  go  to  the 
extreme  of  the  mystic  trance  which  are  yet  to  be 
classed  as  belonging  to  the  aesthetic  type  of  prayer. 
All  prayers  which  lay  stress  on  the  peace  to  be  at- 
tained by  the  giving  up  of  the  individual  self,  rather 
than  on  any  resultant  efficiency  in  action,  come  un- 
der this  head.  Adoration,  rather  than  petition,  is 
the  keynote  of  prayers  of  this  kind.  And  when 
there  is  petition,  it  is  for  deliverance  from  weakness, 
weariness  and  sin — the  result  again  of  a  wish  to 
abandon  the  old  self.    In  the  Vedic  i)rayers  we  find 


80  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

examples  of  this  type,  which  recur  again  throughout 
the  history  of  prayer. 

"Hail  to  thee,  mighty  Lord,  all-potent  Vishnu  ! 
Soul  of  the  Universe,  unchaugeable, 
Hoi}',  eternal,  always  one  in  nature, — 
Whether    revealed    as    Brahma,    Hari,    S'iva 
Creator  or  Preserver  or  Destroyer," — ' 

and  thus  for  several  pages  of  pure  adoration,  con- 
cluding, 

"Lord   of  the  Universe,   the  only   refuge 
Of  living  beings,  the  alleviator 
Of  pain,   the  benefactor  of  mankind. 
Show  me  Thy  favor  and  deliver  me 
From  evil." 

Then,  after  six  lines  of  descriptive  adoration,  this 
statement  follows: 

•'I   come  to  Thee  for  refuge 
Renouncing   all   attachment   to   the  world, 
Longing   for   fulness   of   felicity. 
Extinction  of  myself,  absoi'ption   into  Thee." 

This  adoration  is  not,  as  Ellis  says  it  is  with  the 
African  tribes  he  mentions,"  and  as  several  of  the 
narrowly  utilitarian  writers  have  assumed  it  to  be 
in  the  case  of  all  such  prayer,  a  lively  sense  of 
Ijenefits  to  come,  and  a  method  of  placating  the 
deity  in  order  to  obtain  them;  there  is  a  distinct 
satisfaction  found  in  the  adoration  itself.  For  sat- 
isfaction always  accompanies  the  solution  of  any 
conflict  in  consciousness,  and  here  the  solution  means 


^  Monier  Williams.  "Indian  Wisdom,"  pp.  51S,  520 ;  Puranas. 

-  A.  B.  Ellis,  "Ewe-Speaking  Peoples  of  the  West  Coast,"  p.  80. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  81 

giving  up  the  weary  and  dejected  me  and  obtaining 
in  place  of  it  a  share  in  a  wider  and  completer  life, 
through  that  projection  of  feeling  which  we  liave 
known  as  Einfiihlung.  All  emphasis  on  the  infinite 
character  of  that  other  life  brings  increased  satis- 
faction, since  it  is  a  life  in  which  the  worshipper 
has  at  least  a  contemplative  share. 

This  type  of  prayer  is  found  in  all  religions.  A 
more  modern  example  of  it,  essentially  the  same  in 
tone  and  even  in  words,  is  the  following  from  George 
Matheson:  "In  that  light  let  me  lose  myself,  0 
Lord. — Not  the  unconsciousness  of  self  which  comes 
from  emptiness,  but  that  which  comes  from  deeper 
fulness. — Not  in  death,  not  in  apathy,  not  even  in 
self-depreciation,  would  1  forget  myself,  but  only 
in  Thee."^  This  is  again  an  example  of  that  ac- 
tivity of  the  social  self  which  we  have  called  Ein- 
fiihlung, the  process  of  living  in  a  life  which  you 
recognize  as  in  a  sense  not  your  own,  but  which  for 
the  moment  at  least  vou  live  more  intenselv  than 
you  are  living  the  life  which  you  call  yours.  It 
means  a  weariness  on  the  me  side  of  consciousness, 
and  a  consequent  transfer  of  emphasis  to  the  alter 
side. 

St.  Teresa  thus  describes  the  completely  passive 
state  of  the  "finite"  self,  in  her  account  of  "perfect 
contemplation":  "The  Divine  Master  stands  teach- 
ing him  without  the  noise  of  words,  and  suspends 


'Times  of  Retirement,"  p.  272, 


82  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER 

his  faculties,  because  should  they  operate  they  would 
rather  hinder  than  help  him.  They  enjoy  without 
understanding  how  they  enjoy.  The  soul  is  burn- 
ing with  love,  yet  does  not  understand  how  she  loves. 
She  understands  sufficiently  that  it  is  not  an  enjoy- 
ment which  the  understanding  obtains  by  desiring 
it.  It  is  a  gift  of  the  Lord  of  Heaven,  who  gives 
like  Himself."^ 

Prayer  literature  is  full  of  prayers  of  this  kind, 
in  which  the  need  is  not  a  narrowly  practical  need 
of  any  particular  external  object,  but  a  need  of  ref- 
uge and  rest  in  a  larger  experience.  This  is  ac- 
companied, as  we  have  seen  before,  by  frequent  ex- 
pression of  weakness  and  sin,  and  by  a  desire,  part- 
ly to  receive  new  energy,  though  such  desire  takes 
us  over  into  our  second  division,  and  partly  to  have 
the  past  self  blotted  out,  to  lose  it,  to  find  rest  from 
it, — the  kind  of  rest  which  Schopenhauer  declared 
was  only  to  be  found  in  temporary  forgetfulness  of 
desire  through  aesthetic  contemplation.  Many  of 
the  psalms  are  of  this  order,  hardly  asking  for  any 
individual  comfort,  but  taking  refuge  in  the  con- 
templation of  a  power  that  is  untouched  and  un- 
moved. Thus  the  one  hundred  and  second  psalm 
begins  with  a  description  of  the  psalmist's  miseries: 
"My  days  consume  like  smoke,  and  my  bones  are 
burned  as  a  fire-brand.  My  heart  is  smitten  like 
grass  and  withered  and  I  forget  to  eat  my  bread," 


'The  Way  of  Perfection,"  p.  142, 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  83 

and  so  on  for  eleven  verses.  Then  there  follows  no 
request  for  individual  blessing;  there  is  no  adora- 
tion for  the  sake  of  the  benefits  to  bo  obtained  l)y 
such  ])raise  of  the  deity;  the  psalmist  finds  his  own 
comfort  in  remembering  the  greatness  of  .Jehovah. 
"But  Thou.  0  Jehovah,  wilt  abide  forever,  and  Thy 
memorial  name  unto  all  generations.  Thou  wilt 
arise  and  have  mercy  upon  Zion; — This  shall  be 
written  for  the  generation  to  come;  and  a  people 
which  shall  be  created  shall  praise  Jehovah." 

This  same  mood  is  expressed  in  tlio  lines  of 
(^lough : 

"It  fortifies  ray  soul  to  know 
That  though   I   perish.   Truth   is  so."  ' 

Tt  is  suggested  also  by  the  classic  test  of  our 
fathers  which  demanded  that  a  man  should  be  will- 
ing to  be  damned  for  the  glorv  of  God.  Assertion 
of  such  willingness  must  be  regarded,  not  as  bra- 
vado, nor  as  a  sneaking  attem])t  to  get  something- 
out  of  God  by  heing  so  subservient,  but,  at  least  in 
its  purest  form,  as  a  very  real  tribute  to  the  tri- 
umphant power  of  Einfiihlung,  resulting  in  a  de- 
sire to  contribute  to  the  glory  of  the  greater  self 
even  at  the  cost  of  tremendous  expense  to  the  lesser 
one. 

The  ritualistic  form  of  prayer,  as  against  the  "in- 
dividualistic", may  also  be  classed  with  the  aps- 
tlietic  type.  Tt  is  again  a  relation  of  selves,  but 
this  time  it  is  the  conmiunitv-self  which  takes  the 


*  Page.  "British  Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Century."  p.  702. 


V 


84  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

place  of  the  me,  and  enters  into  relation  with  the 
ideal  alter.  For  the  individual  participant,  the  re- 
sult is  of  the  type  already  noticed  in  the  prayers  we 
have  been  considering. 

His  private  desires,  even  his  private  sins, — his 
private  self,  in  other  words, — is  lost  in  the  larger 
community-self  which  needs  help  and  regeneration. 
The  needs  of  this  community- self  are  more  constant 
in  character;  hence  we  find  the  use  of  set  forms  of 
prayers.  There  is  less  emotional  stress,  except  in 
times  of  great  public  need.  Under  ordinary  circum- 
stances the  ritualistic  prayer  is  not  a  prayer  of  high 
tension.  Any  emotion  attending  it  is  not  of  the 
violent  kind  which  attends  a  crisis  in  the  emergence 
of  a  new  self,  but  rather  the  steady  and  cumulative 
type  which  attends  an  emphasized  repetition  of 
some  part  of  a  chain  of  habit.  The  constant  repeti- 
tion by  an  entire  congregation  of  the  refrain  "We 
beseech  thee  to  hear  us,  0  God, ' '  has  undoubtedly  an 
emotional  accompaniment,  but  not  the  cataclysmic 
accompaniment  which  occurs  in  an  ethical  revolution 
within  the  self  of  immediate  desire. 

To  completely  carry  out  the  discussion  of  the  ritu- 
alistic type  of  prayer,  it  would  be  necessary  to  go 
exhaustively  into  the  subject  of  group-psychology. 
The  influence  of  a  surrounding  religious  "commu- 
nity" gives  great  reinforcement  to  the  religious 
strivings  of  the  self.  "When  we  live  in  the  midst  of 
Christian  people,  the  sense  is  awakened  by  which  we 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PKAYEB  85 

may  see  God."'  Wo  have  ranked  the  ritualistic 
iirayer,  however,  under  the  aesthetic  type,  because 
the  individual  loses  himself  and  his  own  desires  in 
a  wider  self,  and  emerges,  not  with  a  strong  incen- 
tive to  any  particular  action,  but  calmed  and  soothed 
by  the  momentary  forgetfulness  of  his  narrower 
self  ill  the  face  of  a  wider  reality.  The  diiYerence 
between  this  type  and  the  other  aesthetic  type  we 
have  been  describing  is  that  the  me  loses  itself,  not 
directly  in  the  perfect  alter,  but  first  in  the  larger 
but  still  finite  alter  which  we  have  called  the  com- 
munity-self. In  this  connection  we  note  that  the 
ritualistic  form  of  worship  flourished  most  in  times 
and  communities  in  which  the  possibility  of  individ- 
ual access  to  God  was  not  so  emphasized  and  indi- 
vidual res])onsibility  to  God  not  so  insisted  upon. 

Moreover,  the  efFtn-ts  of  the  ritualistic  churches 
aim  at  securing  conformity  with  the  religious  life 
and  habits  of  the  community,  through  confirmation 
and  religious  education,  rather  than  at  any  individ- 
ual religious  experience  of  the  type  emphasized  by 
the  churches  which  insist  on  conversion.  We  shall 
see  later,  in  connection  with  prayers  for  conversion, 
the  intensely  emotional  nature  of  the  crisis  attend- 
ing the  sudden  formation  of  a  practically  new  self. 
Tn  times  of  revolt,  of  non-conformity,  of  democratic 
insistence  on  the  rights  of  the  individual  soul,  that 
soul's  personal  relation  to  God  assumes  an  imi)or- 


'  Herrmann.  "Conjmunion  with  God,"  p.  190. 


86  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

tance  which  for  other  times  and  other  temperaments 
may  seem  egoistic  in  the  extreme.  The  personal 
nature  of  prayer-meeting  "testimonies",  the  com- 
mon assumption  that  all  the  powers  of  good  and  evil 
in  the  universe  were  intensely  concerned  in  the  out- 
come of  the  fight,  and  that  God  would  have  suf- 
fered a  permanent  lack  if  victory  had  not  been  at- 
tained,— these  things  are  usually  regarded  with  de- 
cided aversion  by  a  more  ritualistic  temperament. 
For  him  the  individual  is  but  one  member  of  a  com- 
munity, and  it  is  God's  care  for  the  community 
which  is  the  important  thing.  The  part  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  to  learn,  gradually  and  without  violent  up- 
heaval, through  the  jjrocesses  of  training,  confirma- 
tion, and  a  regulated  form  of  worship,  the  duty  of 
conforming  to  the  tradition  which  the  community 
has  found  to  be  of  value.  This  is  the  significance  of 
the  ritualistic  type  of  prayer.  Although  it  aims 
ultimately  at  a  practical  result,  we  class  it  under 
the  aesthetic  form,  because  the  end  is,  for  the  indi- 
vidual self,  a  cessation  rather  than  an  accentuation 
of  striving. 

Prayers  of  thanksgiving  also  come  under  this  gen- 
eral classification.  They  belong  to  a  form  more 
like  ordinary  social  intercourse,  but  verging  on  the 
{esthetic  type  of  prayer  in  their  contemplation  of 
ideal  beauty  and  goodness.  But  the  me  is  here 
more  prominent;  it  has  a  definite  part  to  play;  it 
does  not  merely  lose  itself. 

Prayers  of  the  aesthetic  type,  the  type  we  have 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  87 

been  considering,  aim  then  at  a  definite  social  end — 
the  widening  of  the  self,  not  necessarily  through 
ethical  activity,  lint  through  the  contemplative  shar- 
ing of  the  life  of  a  larger  self.  The  need  of  prayer 
of  this  kind  is  felt  at  moments  of  depression  and 
despair;  this  fact  has  led  Guimaraens  to  claim  that 
the  ''prayer-mood"  is  at  twilight,  when  the  bodily 
need  for  rest  and  recuperation  is  felt.'  And  in  the 
attainment  of  the  desired  end,  the  one  thing  em- 
phasized by  all  religious  teachers  is  the  giving  u}) 
of  the  individual  will.  St.  Teresa-  says,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  that  the  Divine  Master  "suspends  the 
faculties,  because  should  they  operate  they  would 
hinder  rather  than  help  him."  The  religious  per- 
son, according  to  her,  is  to  give  up  all  striving,  even 
the  striving  to  control  wandering  thoughts.  "The 
understanding  torments  them,  running  after  worldly 
things;  let  it  go  and  laugh  at  it.  He  who  strives  to 
gain  much,  loses  all  at  once."  In  another  place  she 
describes  the  mood  of  prayer  as  one  of  such  quietude, 
such  suspension  of  the  individual's  faculties  that 
"they  would  not  have  the  body  move  because  they 
think  that  they  should  lose  that  peace  and  therefore 
they  dare  not  stir.  Speaking  is  painful  to  them, — 
they  do  not  wish  pvon  to  briMthe."  Prayer  is  for 
St.  Teresa  "the  settling  of  the  soul  in  peace."  As 
an  instructive  contrast  to  this  mood  we  might  no- 
tice an  extreme  example  of  the  other  fonn  of  prayer 


'  "Le  Besoin   de  Prior."  licruc   PhiloKophi<iur.   liv.  L*01. 
=  "Tbe  Way  of  Perfectiou,"  pp.  142.   182.   ITC. 


88  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYEE 

which  we  shall  consider  in  detail  later — taken  from 
the  revivalist  Finney:  "The  burden  of  his  soul 
was  so  great  that  he  was  unable  to  stand,  and  would 
writhe  and  groan  in  agony."  ^ 

Eeturning  to  the  form  of  prayer  which  we  have 
been  discussing,  we  notice  as  an  example  of  the  con- 
dition of  mind  attained  the  statement  of  the  psalm- 
ist: '^I  will  lay  me  down  in  peace  and  take  my 
rest,  for  it  is  Thou,  Lord,  that  makest  me  dwell  in 
safety."-  And  as  an  account  of  the  way  in  which 
such  peace  is  attained,  take  George  Matheson:'* 
"In  the  hour  of  perturbation  thou  canst  not  hear 
the  answer  to  thy  prayers. — The  heart  got  no  re- 
sponse at  the  moment  of  its  crying, — in  its  thunder, 
its  earthquake  and  its  fire.  But  when  the  crying- 
ceased  and  the  stillness  fell,  when  thy  hand  de- 
sisted from  knocking  on  the  iron  gate, — then  ap- 
peared the  long-delayed  reply. — It  is  only  in  the  cool 
of  the  day  that  the  voice  of  the  Lord  God  is  heard 
in  the  garden."  In  other  words,  the  results  desired 
by  this  kind  of  religious  consciousness, — peace,  con- 
fidence, and  the  "sweetness  of  God  in  the  soul"* — 
are  obtained  by  the  relinquishment  of  conscious 
striving. 

Surrender — the  giving  up  of  the  feeling  of  re- 
sponsibility— is  a  fundamental  form  of  human  ex- 


'Cited    in    Torrey.    "How    to   Pray."   p.   117. 

*  Psalm.  4  :8. 

^  "Times  of  Retirement."  p.  60. 

*  Father  John  Sergieff.  "My  Life  in  Christ,"  p.  26. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   PRAYER  89 

porience.  Put  in  psycho-physiological  terms,  it  is 
the  giving  np  of  the  strain  of  conscious  choice  and 
concentrated  action,  and  a  reliance  on  the  habitual 
activities  of  the  organism.  This  brings  with  it  the 
needed  rest  and  peace.  This  mood  may  also  have 
a  practical  function  to  play  in  furthering  achieve- 
ment simply  by  giving  up  the  too  strenuous  en- 
deavor for  that  achievement.  As  Clough  adds,  in 
the  poem  already  quoted: 

"I   steadier  step  when    T   recall 
Howe'er  I  slip.  Thou  canst  not  fall." 

The  removal  of  too  great  concern  for  one's  own 
slipping  is  often  the  surest  way  to  prevent  that 
slipping. 

But  this  general  statement,  which  is  the  explana- 
tion frequently  given  to  cover  this  type  of  prayer, 
is  not  adequate  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first  place, 
prayer  may  give  up  conscious  striving  for  the  par- 
ticular end  hitherto  desired  without  thereby  giving 
up  consciousness  altogether.  The  problems  and  con- 
flicts which  were  causing  weariness  and  despair  are 
turned  over  to  the  habitual  activities,  and  rest  en- 
sues; but  this  is  done,  not  by  the  complete  relinquish- 
ment of  consciousness,  but  by  the  shift  of  attention 
to  another  field.  And,  second,  even  in  the  case  of 
the  trance,  in  which  consciousness  is  entirely  given 
up,  we  do  not  depend  on  subconscious  activities  in 
general.  We  must  again  emphasize  the  fact  that 
we  do  nothing  "in  jreneral".    The  subconscious  ac- 


I 


90  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER 

tivities  do  not  always  act  to  the  same  end,  because 
they  are  not  always  given  the  same  kind  of  mate- 
rial to  start  with.  Hence  the  results  obtained  in 
prayer  are  not  necessarily  the  results  that  would  be 
obtained  by  any  and  every  kind  of  self-surrender. 
The  strivings  of  the  individual  self  may  be  given 
up  on  account  of  hopeless  despair  in  face  of  an 
overwhelmingly  hostile  environment ;  the  subcon- 
scious activities  of  the  organism  keep  life  going  in 
this  case  also,  until  the  consciousness  is  sufficiently 
restored  in  energy  to  take  up  the  fight  again.  Un- 
der such  conditions  rest  and  recuperation  undoubt- 
edly take  place,  but  hardly  "peace" — not  at  least 
that  highly  enjoyable  state  of  peace  accompanying 
the  self-surrender  of  prayer, — although  even  in  the 
extreme  of  despair  there  may  sometimes  be  a  kind 
of  negative  enjoyment  resulting  from  the  cessation 
of  effort. 

Thus  the  result  which  will  issue  from  self-sur- 
render depends  upon  the  nature  of  the  alter  to  which 
surrender  is  made.  This  fact  gives  especial  point 
to  the  admonition  of  Torrey  to  pray  "after  all  great 
achievements",  or,  as  another  writer  puts  it,  "after 
an  exhausting  series  of  duties  when  body  and  mind 
are  tired".  At  such  a  time  some  relinquishment  of 
conscious  striving  is  sure  to  come  through  sheer 
exhaustion;  a  surrender  to  some  sort  of  organized 
subconscious  activity  will  occur.  Whether  this  sur- 
render is  to  be  pleasurable  or  painful,  whether  it  is 
to  bring  moral  uplift  or  merely  the  despair  of  ex- 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  91 

hanstion,  depends  on  the  direction  given  to  the  as- 
sociative processes  by  tlie  last  conscious  contriVni- 
tion.  If  prayer  be  the  form  the  surrender  takes, 
then  it  is  a  surrender  to  a  "self",  not  only  wider 
and  of  surer  action, — the  subconscious  self  is  al- 
ways that, — 1)ut  also  hio^her  and  of  more  ideal  net  ion. 
The  result  is  not  simply  rest  and  recuperation,  but 
also  a  heig-htening-  of  the  moral  tone. 

There  are,  of  course,  in  the  contem]ilative  types 
of  prayer,  many  "])rayers"  which  lay  little  stress 
on  this  moral  aspect,  and  in  which  surrender  to  the 
contemplation  of  an  lesthetic  ideal  or  even  to  a 
sheer  ''unconscious"  rest  from  striving,  is  the  end 
attained.  The  Buddhist  search  for  Nirvana  is  tbe 
most  perfect  exam])le  of  the  surrender  of  the  in- 
dividual me  to  a  com])letely  generalized  form  of 
subconscious  activity.  There  is  not  even  an  attempt 
on  the  pai't  of  tlie  me  to  give  a  suggestion  around 
which  the  subconscious  associations  shall  gather; 
the  subconscious  ''self"  in  tbis  case  is  the  most  gen- 
eralized one  possible.  Tn  the  iierfect  type  of  this 
contemplation,  there  would  be  no  moral  or  aps- 
thotic  emphasis  whatever;  simply  absolute  rest  on 
subconscious  activities.  A  result  analogous  to  this 
is  attained  for  a  part  of  tbe  mystic's  trance  of  ec- 
stasy,— in  the  complete  blotting  out  of  conscious- 
ness. But  there  is  this  difference  in  the  case  of 
most  at  least  of  the  Christian  mystics,  that  the  self 
to  which  surrender  is  made  is,  up  to  the  last  mo- 
ment of  consciousness,  a  moral  ideal,  and  appears 


92  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

again  as  this  ideal  as  soon  as  the  moments  of  un- 
consciousness are  over.  Thus  a  moral  reinforce- 
ment may  take  place  as  ultimate  result  which  would 
not  have  been  possible  in  the  other  case. 

So  we  see  that  in  the  prayers  in  which  the  aes- 
thetic ideal  is  prominent  moral  reinforcement  may 
or  may  not  occur.  The  result  obtained  depends  on 
how  far  the  individual  in  question  identifies  the 
perfectly  sublime  and  perfectly  beautiful  with  the 
perfectly  good. 

In  an  ethical  religion,  this  identification  is  made. 
Hence  the  normal  prayer  of  such  a  religion  includes 
not  merely  peace  and  rest  but  moral  uplift;  the 
prayer  finds  its  justification,  for  that  religious  con- 
sciousness, not  only  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  pres- 
ence of  God,  as  an  end  in  itself,  but  in  the  practical 
consequences  of  that  presence  in  the  furtherance  of 
moral  action,  which,  however  long  delayed,  must 
at  last  follow.  This  will  take  us  over  into  our  next 
discussion.  We  conclude  our  survey  of  the  aes- 
thetic type  of  prayer  with  the  description  given  by 
Hermiann,  which,  though  taken  from  the  religious 
point  of  view,  makes  use  of  almost  the  same  terms 
which  we  have  employed  in  our  psychological  analy- 
sis :  ''Prayer  is  an  inward  conflict,  which  should  nor- 
mally bring  the  Christian  up  to  a  higher  plane  of  the 
/)  inner  life;  the  sign  of  the  attainment  of  this  goal  is 

the  dying  away  of  the  storm  of  desire  into  stillness 
before  God. ' '  ^ 


^  Herrmann,  "Communion  with  God,"  p.  338. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  9,'] 

THE  TWO  TENDENCIES  IN  THE  COMPLETELY  SOCIAL  TYPE. 
THE    PRACTICAL    OR    '' ETHICAL" 

We  saw  that  in  any  social  act  there  are  two  tend- 
encies, the  aesthetic  and  the  practical,  one  aiming 
to  include  as  much  social  content  as  possible  in  con- 
sciousness, the  other  to  pass  as  quickly  as  possible 
into  action.  We  saw  that  the  aesthetic  type  of 
prayer  was  one  in  which  the  emphasis  was  laid  on 
the  experience  itself,  rather  than  on  any  ethical 
results  to  be  obtained.  Bunyan  remarks:  "I  had 
two  or  three  times,  at  or  about  my  deliverance  from 
this  temptation,  such  strange  apprehensions  of  the 
grace  of  God  that  I  could  hardly  bear  up  under  it, 
it  was  so  out  of  measure  amazing,  when  I  thought 
it  could  reach  me.  I  do  think,  if  that  sense  of  it  had 
abode  long  upon  me,  it  would  have  made  me  inca- 
pable for  business."^  But  the  prevailing  religious 
sentiment  declares  against  any  form  of  prayer  so  ex- 
treme as  to  make  a  man  "incapable  for  business". 
The  i)revailing  religious  sentiment  of  our  day,  that 
is;  for  the  dictum  of  the  Middle  Ages  on  this  mat- 
ter was  less  authoritative.  But  no  normal  tyi)e  of 
mind,  unless  it  be  the  Oriental,  desires  repose  and 
inactivity  for  any  permanent  stretch  of  time.  It 
is  only  in  moments  of  weariness  and  weakness,  com- 
l)aratively  speaking,  that  the  western  mind  is  con- 
tent with  this  loss  of  his   individual  striving;  the 


'  Bunyan,  "Grace  Abounding,"  par.  252. 


94  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAITER 

prayer  which  is  mere  adoration  is  a  recurring  but 
not  a  continuous  phenomenon  in  any  life.  And  it  is 
not  merely  a  question  of  satisfaction  with  such  an 
experience;  it  is  a  question  of  the  impossibility  of 
a  consciousness  without  the  recurrence  of  the  con- 
flict of  selves.  Without  this  conflict  consciousness 
would  quickly  sink  into  the  activities  of  habit;  in 
other  words,  it  would  become  unconscious.  It  is  lit- 
erally and  psychologically  true  that  the  absorption 
into  another  life,  unless  that  life  were  also  a  chang- 
ing one,  changing  as  ours  does  by  conflicts  of  selves, 
would  mean,  as  the  Buddhists  claim  that  it  does, 
unconsciousness. 

So  we  find  that  the  more  active  religious  leaders 
give  constant  warning  against  a  type  of  prayer 
which  tends  to  absorption  in  the  experience  itself. 
"If  faith  is  not  to  be  a  mere  play  of  words  con- 
cerning God,"  says  Herrmann," it  must  pass  into  the 
form  of  prayer;  and  if  prayer  is  not  to  be  a  play  of 
fancy  or  an  unmeaning  travail,  it  must  be  the  appli- 
cation of  faith  to  the  affairs  of  the  moment."  "The 
moral  activity  of  the  Christian  forms  part  of  his 
communion  with  God. "  "  Religious  experience  must 
come  to  its  natural  completion  in  the  moral  will."^ 
Fenelon  also  closes  his  admonitions  to  prayer  by 
adding:  "I  assume  that  you  will  always  proceed  to 
make  some  practical  resolution,  ending  with  an  act 
of  self-abandonment  to  God,  and  of  thanksgiving  for 


^Herrmann,  "Communion  with  God,"  pp.  336,  298,  309. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER  05 

the  help  he  has  given  you."  '  For,  as  Cooley  says, 
"the  vital  question  in  leadersliip  or  personal  as- 
cendencv  is  not,  What  are  vou?  but  What  do  vou 
enable  me  to  be?  What  self-developing  ideas  do  you 
enable  me  to  form?"  -  This  is  true  of  all  forms  of 
social  relation.  It  is  especially  true  of  that  phase  of 
the  religions  life  in  which  emphasis  is  placed  on  the 
results  of  prayer  for  character  and  action. 

Those  who  make  this  emphasis,  who  pass  as 
rapidly  as  possible  through  the  social  imaginative 
process  to  the  stage  of  action,  realize  that  in  so  do- 
ing they  are  sacrificing  a  fullness  of  emotional  satis- 
faction and  aesthetic  enjoyment  which  they  miglit 
otherwise  obtain.  But  they  not  only  make  this  sacri- 
fice willingly ;  they  frequently  demand  it  as  impera- 
tive for  true  religion.  Thus  Fenelon  says:  "Ac- 
custom yourself  to  seek  God  within  you ;  it  is  there 
you  will  find  his  kingdom.  Men  delude  themselves 
into  seeking  it  far  away;  aiming  rather  to  taste  the 
sweetness  of  holiness  than  to  submit  reason  to  faith 
and  their  own  will  to  that  of  God."  And  again: 
"Prayer  is  not  at  all  the  same  thing  as  the  conscious 
pleasure  which  is  often  its  accompaniment.  St. 
Teresa  observes  that  many  souls  give  up  prayer  di- 
rectly that  they  cease  to  find  sensible  pleasure  in  it, 
whereas  this  is  to  give  up  prayer  just  when  it  is  in 
the  way  to  be  perfected."  And  still  again  he  warns 
against  a  judgment  of  religion  based  on  the  amount 


•  •'LetttTS  to  Men."  trans,  by  Sidnoy  Lear.  p.  63. 
=Cooley.  p.  313. 


96  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

of  enjoyment  it  yields.  "The  chief  thing  is  the  love 
of  God.  It  is  not  a  question  of  warm  sensible  love. 
You  cannot  win  that  for  yourself  and  it  is  not  nec- 
essary. God  oftener  gives  it  to  the  weak  as  a  sup- 
port than  to  stronger  souls  whom  he  proposes  to 
lead  by  a  purer  faith.  Indeed,  men  are  apt  to  de- 
ceive themselves  in  such  love,  to  cling  to  its  enjoy- 
ment instead  of  to  God  only. — True  love  of  God 
often  consists  in  a  dry  firm  resolution  to  give  up 
everything  to  him. ' '  ^ 

Herrmann  also  takes  deliberate  issue  with  the  ad- 
vocates of  mysticism:  "Life  in  the  Eternal  is  laid 
oi)en  before  us  when  we  understand  moral  necessity, 
and  we  share  that  life  in  the  Eternal  when  we  choose 
with  joy,  and  so  of  our  own  free  will,  to  do  what  is 
morally  necessary.  The  power  that  helps  us  to  do 
this  is  our  God. — -Whether  in  this  case  the  inner  life 
is  richer  than  one  lived  in  blind  devotion  to  the  In- 
finite, and  whether  it  means  more  to  men  to  live  in 
the  Eternal  or  to  disappear  before  its  presence, — 
these  are  questions  on  which  we  shall  never  agree 
with  the  advocates  of  mysticism." - 

We  do  not  need  to  resort  to  the  assertion  of  the 
Epistle  of  James  that  "faith  without  works  is 
dead'V^  nor  to  the  insistence  of  Paul  that  spiritual 
ecstasy  such  as  that  described  in  "the  gift  of 
tongues"*  should  be  tested  by  its  contribution  of 


'  Fenelon,  pp.  70,  78,  144.    ' 
^  Herrmann,  p.  197. 
'James  2:17. 
*  I  Corinthians  14. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PRAYER  97 

good  to  the  community,  nor  to  tlie  constant  ethical 
emphasis  of  Jesus, — to  prove  our  statement  that  an 
ethical  religion  always  demands  that  a  life  of  prayer 
shall  justify  itself,  not  only  by  tlie  ))eace  and  joy 
it  gives,  but  by  actually  lifting  "men  out  of  the  life 
according  to  the  flesh",'  And  although  the  average 
religious  person  asserts  that  while  the  joy  of  the 
prayer  life  is  not  its  supreme  test,  yet  such  joy  is  to 
be  expected,  there  is,  nevertheless,  frequent  insist- 
tence  in  prayer  literature  that  a  truly  religious  life 
"will  have  nothing  to  do  with  strained  emotion,  or 
with  the  working  up  of  feeling  for  its  own  sake".- 
The  extent  to  which  religion  is  limited  to  the 
l)roducing  of  an  ethical  result  varies  enormously 
with  different  temperaments.  The  jirevailing  mod- 
ern tendency  has  been  to  so  limit  it.  This  may  reach 
the  denial  of  man's  right  to  any  other  kind  of  reli- 
gious or  even  ])hilosopliic  satisfaction,  as  in  San- 
tayana  's 

'•Amid  tlic  world's  lonp;  strivinfi,  wherefore  ask 
What  reasons  were  or  what  rewards  shall  be? 
The-  covenant  God  kivp  us  is  n  task."' 

And  Kant,  with  his  tremendously  developed  em- 
])hasis  on  the  ethical  demand,  feels  that  religion 
adds  nothings  to  morality  other  than  the  sense  that 
the  connnands  of  dutv  are  vested  with  a  divine  sanc- 


'  ITcrrmann.   p.  3.^;". 

-  IIeni->'  Chiinhill   Kino;.   "Thoolofry  and   the  Social  Consciousness," 
p.  83. 

^  Snntayaua,  "Sonnets  and  Oilier  Poems."  p.  lli. 


98  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

tion.  But  with  this  statement  of  Kant's  we  reach 
the  farthest  limit  to  which  we  may  go,  while  still  re- 
taining a  bo?ia  fide  social  relationship  in  conscious- 
ness. It  is  a  question,  indeed,  whether  we  have  not 
already  passed  that  limit.  When  the  entire  social 
content  of  the  alter  is  reduced  to  a  mere  emphasis 
on  a  certain  aspect  of  the  me,  the  imaginative  social 
process  passes  so  quickly  into  the  next  stage,  either 
of  action  or,  in  case  the  details  of  action  are  as  yet 
undetermined,  of  reflection,  that  it  is  hardly  given, 
mentally,  the  value  of  a  relation  of  selves.  A  de- 
velopment of  this  kind  is  very  common  with  the  pass- 
ing of  the  intensely  emotional  life  of  youth,  which 
is,  as  Cooley  suggests,  preeminently  "the  time  for 
personal  ideals.  Later,  the  personal  element  in  these 
ideals,  having  performed  its  function  of  suggesting 
and  vivifying  them,  is  likely  to  fade  out  of  the  con- 
sciousness and  leave  only  habits  and  principles 
whose  social  origin  is  forgotten".^  The  result  is, 
of  course,  as  it  always  is  when  any  activities  are 
passed  over  to  the  control  of  habit,  a  loss  in  emo- 
tional and  social  content  in  those  activities,  but  an 
increase  in  regularity  and  certainty  of  action.  The 
social  imaginative  process  may  change  its  storm- 
center  to  other  problems  which  are  still  felt  as  emo- 
tionally vital,  or  it  may  pass  almost  entirely  out 
of  consciousness,  leaving  an  efficient  automaton  in- 
stead of  a  growing  person.     There  are  "innumer- 


^  Cooley,  p.  212. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  99 

able  people  of  much  energy  but  slnggish  intellect 
who  will  go  ahead,  but  what  direction  they  take  is  a 
matter  of  the  opportune  suggestion. — At  some  epoch 
in  the  past,  perhaps  in  some  hour  of  emotional  ex- 
altation, something  was  printed  on  their  minds  to 
remain  till  death,  and  be  read  and  followed  daily".' 

At  this  limit  of  the  religious  consciousness,  then, 
prayer  passes,  through  loss  of  social  content,  first 
into  moral  action  and  finally  into  unconscious  activ- 
ity,  just  as  at  the  other  limit  it  was  seen  to  pass  in 
a  similar  way  into  unconsciousness,  through  the 
stage  of  aesthetic  contemplation. 

As  long,  however,  as  prayer  remains  prayer, 
it  is  a  social  process,  aiming,  as  we  have  constantly 
said,  at  the  establishment  of  a  wider  self, — in  this 
case  a  self  of  greater  ethical  power  and  enthusiam. 
Examples  might  be  indefinitely  multiplied.  For  in 
ethical  religions  the  object  of  adoration  and  the 
"great  companion"  has  always  been  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  ethical  ideal  the  supreme  judge  of  con- 
duct. And  from  this  combination  of  characters  it 
is  but  a  step  to  the  demand  for  assistance  in  the 
moral  conflict.  The  fixing  of  the  ethical  ideal  and 
the  giving  of  strength  to  attain  it, — this  is  the  of- 
fice of  the  alter  in  this  type  of  prayer.  God  ''makes 
no  offer  to  take  the  soul  out  of  the  storm.  Indeed, 
it  is  in  the  furious  center  of  the  storm  that  He  is 
to  be  met.    He  knows  and  shares  all.— He  believes 


Cooley,  p.  43. 


100  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

in  what  the  sonl  may  become.  He  believes  that  .He 
can  restore  the  ruin. — This  is  the  soul's  safety,  the 
pledge  of  ultimate  victory"/ 

Several  prayers  may  be  briefly  noted  as  character- 
istic examples  of  this  type.  "Create  in  me  a  clean 
heart,  0  God,  and  renew  a  right  spirit  within  me."  - 
"We  beseech  Thee  that  our  hearts  may  be  so  kindled 
with  heavenly  desires  and  Thy  love  so  shed  abroad 
in  us  that  we  may  continually  seek  the  things  that 
are  above."''  "0  Lord  God,  in  whose  hand  are  the 
wills  and  affections  of  men,  kindle  in  my  mind  holy 
desires,  and  repress  sinful  and  corrupt  imagina- 
tions." ^ 

* '  Unite  your  soul  to  God  by  means  of  hearty  faith, 
and  you  will  be  able  to  accomplish  anything,"* 
says  Father  John  Sergieff.  On  investigation,  what 
he  means  by  "everything"  is  found  to  be  the  "con- 
quest of  invisible  enemies,  of  passions,  of  sorrows,  of 
despondency".  In  other  words,  moral  reinforcement 
is  the  thing  demanded,  and  according  to  his  testi- 
mony obtained,  through  prayer.  Prayers  for  the 
more  specific  virtues  also  come  under  this  head.  St. 
Francis  prayed  for  the  "active  virtues".  Practi- 
cally all  who  make  much  use  of  prayer  employ  it  in 
preparation  for  special  crises,  for  which  they  ask 
strength  or  patience,  or  the  particular  virtue  that 


M^ance.  "Tlie  Rise  of  the  Soul,"  p.  113. 

^  Psalm  51 :10. 

'Mis.  Tileston.  "Prayers.  Ancient  and  Modern,"  pp.  262.  302. 

■"  Father  John  Sergieff,  "My  Life  in  Christ,"  p.  45, 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PRAYER  101 

seems  to  them  most  necessary  for  the  coming  trial. 
We  even  find  certain  magazines  of  the  ''New 
Thought"  offering,  in  return  for  prayer,  not  only 
an  ethical  advance  in  the  narrow  sense  but  the  most 
seductive  promises  of  "'remarkable  ability,  extraor- 
dinary talent  and  rare  genius"!'  "The  attitude 
of  conscious  prayer  places  the  mind  in  such  close 
touch  with  Supreme  power  that  it  actually  feels  that 
power,  and  when  the  mind  feels  Supreme  power 
there  is  a  decided  increase  in  capacity,  ability  and 
efficiency."  "Whatever  the  conditions  or  circum- 
stances of  a  person  today,  he  can  steadily,  through 
the  use  of  real  prayer,  cause  all  things  to  steadily 
change  for  the  bettor. — Real  ])rayer  is  the  direct 
path  to  the  heights."^ 

Prayers  for  conversion  come  mIso  under  this  gen- 
eral type.  The  social  conflict  is  often  a  very  acute 
one  in  such  prayers.  The  end  in  view  is  not  simply 
a  wider  self,  but- an  almost  comjiletely  now  self.  The 
old  self  must  be  given  up;  the  old  will  must  bo 
"broken  down".  Tliis  is  not  a  surrender  of  all 
willing,  as  in  the  fpsthetic  type  of  prayer,  though 
if  the  conflict  becomes  unbearably  intense  it  may 
pass  through  very  weariness  into  that  type;  it  is. 
essentially,  a  change  of  one  form  of  willing  for  an- 
other— the  fiercest  kind  of  conflict  known.  Add  to 
this  the  fact  that  the  alter  and  llio  me  are  by  the 
veiw  nature  of  this  relation  set  over  against  each 


'  Eternal    ProErrPSs.     Puhliphed   by   C.  D.    linrson.   rinrinnati.    lOOS. 
August;  p.  is.  article  on  Constructivf  Iinairiiiation. 


102  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

other  as  antagonistic,  and  the  greatness  of  the  ten- 
sion is  immediately  seen.  Torrey,  speaking  of  Fin- 
ney, says:  "The  bnrden  of  his  soul  would  often 
he  so  great  that  he  was  unable  to  stand,  and  he 
would  writhe  and  groan  in  agony. ' '  ^ 

A  frequent  experience  in  prayers  for  conversion  is 
that  the  lower  will  must  he  broken  down  at  some  par- 
ticular point  of  resistance,  which  may  be  in  itself 
ridiculously  insignificant.  The  essential  nature  of 
it  in  the  experience  is  simply  that  it  has  become  iden- 
tified in  the  mind  with  the  old  unyielding,  "lower" 
self;  around  it  the  resistance  focuses.  When  this  oc- 
curs, the  point  must  always  be  ;saelded,  however  in- 
sigTiificant  it  may  intrinsically  be,  if  the  conflict  is 
to  result  in  the  formation  of  the  desired  higher 
self. 

Thus  at  the  time  when  Finney's  preaching  was 
making  many  converts,  it  became  a  custom  for  those 
who  were  "struggling  with  the  Spirit  of  God"  to  go 
up  into  the  woods  to  pray.  They  usually  came 
away  rejoicing  and  with  things  completely  settled. 
One  young  man,  Finney  relates,  was  unwilling 
through  pride  to  be  seen  going  into  the  woods  for 
this  purpose.  Gradually  that  unwillingness  came 
to  be  the  point  of  tension  in  his  experience.  He 
prayed,  but  could  not  persuade  himself  that  his 
prayer  was  heard.  One  night  he  prayed  all  night  in 
his  parlor,  but  in  the  morning  was  more  distressed 
than  ever.     Once,  in  order  to  convince  himself  and 

1  Torrey,  "How  to  Pray,"  p.  117. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  103 

God  that  it  was  not  tlirougli  pnde  that  he  kept  out 
of  the  woods,  he  actually  knelt  in  a  mud-puddle  to 
pray.  After  weeks  of  this  struggle  he  gave  in, 
went  to  the  woods  and  found  peace  immediately.  ^ 
The  conflict  of  selves  was  resolved. 

Finney  recognizes  quite  fully  the  immaterial  na- 
ture of  the  particular  obstacle  in  this  case;  other 
evangelists  are  not  always  so  sane.  Thus  Torrey 
relates  ■  with  an  almost  triumphant  glee  the  story 
of  a  man  who  obtained  no  relief  in  prayer  till  he 
brought  himself  to  say  the  words  ''For  Jesus'  sake." 
This  he  would  not  do  at  first,  having  had  Unitarian 
antecedents,  and  this  one  reser\^e  became  the  point 
of  tension  and  separation  between  the  two  selves, 
preventing  their  union. 

When  the  new  self  has  finally  been  established, 
succeeding  conflicts  are  less  intense.  The  habit  of 
yielding  to  a  certain  moral  ideal  has  been  formed. 
There  may  even  ensue  a  complete  cessation  of  all 
further  social  growth,  as  in  the  type  of  person  al- 
ready quoted  from  Cooley,  upon  whose  mind  some- 
thing was  "printed  to  remain  until  death  and  be  fol- 
lowed daily".  This  will  occur  unless  some  new 
situation  brings  \\]^  again  a  significant  problem  of 
ends,  or  unless  the  person  is  of  the  sensitive  reli- 
o-ious  nature  which  sees  in  the  most  trivial  events 
questions  of  value  involved.  Persons  of  this  ty]ie 
make  moral  problems  out  of  a  small  amount  of  ex- 


'  "Autobiocraphy  of  Finnoy."  p.  32. 

*  Torrey.  "How  to  Pray."  p.  HI  et  scq. 


104  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYER 

ternal  material;  hence  the  social  nature  of  their 
prayer  does  not  suffer  from  the  difficulties  usually 
attending  the  habitual  use  of  prayer  in  an  unevent- 
ful moral  life.  For  their  moral  life  is  not  unevent- 
ful. 

These  are  the  people  who  "sweep  a  room  as  by 
God's  laws".  Often  this  may  mean  a  waste  of 
mental  energy, — this  constant  use  of  the  most  in- 
clusive social  ideal  for  purely  minor  ends.  That 
consciousness  may  succeed  in  relating  the  widest 
ideal  and  the  most  trivial  details  of  life  is  not  here 
questioned.  But  the  old  problem  of  the  relation  of 
means  to  ends  com.es  up  here  again  on  a  different 
level.  We  have  already  noticed  that  the  immature 
consciousness  makes  use  of  prayer  for  any  kind  of 
end,  because  religious  ends  are  not  yet  clearly  de- 
fined. At  this  stage  those  ends  have  been  defined 
and  then  emphasized  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  evi- 
dent the  possibility  of  their  connection,  by  means  of 
the  will,  with  every  aspect  of  life.  The  actual  truth 
of  such  connection  for  a  strongly  religious  conscious- 
ness is  undoubted.  Its  economic  utility  is  not  so 
certain.  For  this  again  raises  the  old  problem  of  the 
two  tendencies:  one  to  rest  content  with  an  experi- 
ence, the  other  to  pass  quickly  into  action. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  former,  the  giving  of 
religious  values  to  every  action  is  undoubtedly  an 
enrichment  of  consciousness.  From  the  standpoint 
of  the  latter  it  might  occasionally  prove  less  wear- 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PEAYER  105 

iiig,  to  one's  self  and  to  others,  to  ''sweep  the  room" 
l)y  habit. 

A  consciousness  which  demands  a  frequent  and  an 
emotionally  rich  renewal  of  the  social  relationship 
of  prayei',  and  which  does  not  succeed  in  "making- 
moral  problems  out  of  everything",  inevitably  meets 
w'lih  severe  discouragements.  Father  John  Sergieff 
records  the  great  difficulty  of  habitually  attaining 
the  mood  of  ardent  prayer/  "The  evil  spirit  tries 
to  scatter  prayer  as  it  were  a  sand-heap;  to  make  it 
without  fervor  of  heart ;  such  prayer  brings  no 
profit."  And  again,  "even  during  prayer  there 
sometimes  occur  moments  of  deadly  darkness 
and  spiritual  anguish,  arising  from  unbelief  of 
the  heart."  xVnd  he  concludes  that  "we  can 
pray  only  through  the  strengthening  of  the  Holy 
Spirit".^  All  religious  leaders  have  recognized 
these  i)eriods  of  "dryness"  in  habitual  i^rayers. 
They  attribute  them  to  differing  causes.  Psycho- 
logically they  are  due  to  the  nature  of  habitual  activ- 
ity, which  when  it  becomes  actually  "habitual"  in 
the  technical  sense  of  that  term,  becomes  uncon- 
scious. The  attention  cannot  keep  the  morally  ideal 
self  in  consciousness  as  long  as  it  is  the  same  morally 
ideal  self.  The  nature  of  selves  is  to  pass  and  change. 
And  if  there  is  not  enough  event  in  the  life  to  keep 
the  ideal  self  constantly  changing  in  content,  it  be- 
gins to  fade  from  consciousness,  and  "unbelief  of 


'My  Life  in  Christ,"  pji.  14.   11. 


106.  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER 

the  heart",  as  Sergieff  distinguishes  it,  sets  in. 
Thus  it  happens  that  hermits  and  men  of  intensively 
religious  but  otherwise  inactive  lives,  have  suf- 
fered most  from  the  pain  of  this  ''dryness".  They 
suffer  from  the  pain  of  trying  to  hold  an  object  in 
consciousness  by  sheer  etfort  of  the  attention,  while 
the  object  changes  insufficiently  to  make  this  feat 
possible.  It  is  an  attempt  to  force  a  relationship 
which  can  arise  in  consciousness  only  out  of  the 
needs  of  an  actual  problem. 

To  sum  up  the  characteristics  of  this  type  of 
prayer,  we  find  that  it,  like  all  the  other  types  dis- 
cussed, is  a  social  relation  and  has  a  social  end.  As 
opposed  to  the  types  of  prayer  which  we  have  called 
undiscriminating,  this  type  gives  clear  recognition 
to  the  fact  that  the  relation  is  a  relation  of  selves 
and  that  the  result  is  a  result  in  a  self.  As  opposed 
to  the  other  completely  social  type  of  prayer,  the 
aesthetic,  this  type  lays  emphasis,  not  on  the  amount 
of  content  which  can  be  taken  into  the  social  rela- 
tionship, but  on  the  capacity  developed  for  moral 
action.  It  does  not  rest  in  prayer  as  an  end  in  it- 
self, but  makes  use  of  it  as  ethical  reinforcement. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  experiencing  con- 
sciousness, this  reinforcement  seems  to  come  in  two 
ways,  which  may  for  convenience'  sake  be  distin- 
guished. There  is  the  additional  strength  which 
comes  to  the  moral  life  from  the  mere  idea  of  a 
mighty  ally.  "To  work  with  the  universe  is  the 
most  tremendous  incentive  that  can  aj^peal  to  an 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PEAYER  107 

individual  will."*  Religion  holds  forth  such  an  in- 
centive. "To  seek  the  ti-uth,  wherever  it  leads,  to 
live  the  life  of  love,  whatever  it  costs, — this  is  to  be 
the  fnend  and  helper  of  God."-  Closely  connected 
with  this  incentive,  religion  brings  the  encourage- 
ment of  inevitable  ultimate  success.  "God  believes 
in  us,"  says  Vance.  "He  believes  in  what  the  soul 
may  become.  He  believes  that  He  can  restore  the 
ruin."''  This  is  a  powerful  reinforcement  for  the 
fainting  strength — simply  this  belief,  taken  apart 
from  any  experience  in  which  renewed  strength 
seems  to  come  directly,  in  answer  to  the  prayer. 

But  cases  of  prayer  are  not  lacking  in  which  the 
experience  seems  to  be  more  intimate  than  this, — 
is  less  traceable  to  the  conscious  use  of  an  idea  of 
confidence.  Father  John  Sergieff  says:  "By  our 
own  experience  we  know  that  during  our  communion 
with  God,  our  mind  is  enlightened  in  an  extraor- 
dinary manner,  and  acquires  the  widest  scale  of  ac- 
tion."* Torrey  urges  the  need  of  prayer  especial- 
ly "when  one  is  ])articularly  busy",  since  the  prayer 
"gives  greater  efficiency  in  work".*^  This  direct  in- 
crease of  power  and  ca]iacity,  in  addition  to  any  con- 
scious accession  of  confidence,  is  noted  by  many 
writers  beside  these. 

The  causes  for  this  are  various,  differing  as  the 


'Porry,   '"J'he  Religions  Expi'rifnco,"   Mnnisf.   xiv,  7n2-7(i(;. 
^Gladden.  "Whore  Does  the  Sky  BofrJ!!?"  p.  3.34. 
'Vance,  "The  Rise  of  a  Soul."  p.  11.3. 
♦"My  Life  in  Christ."  p.  474. 
'Torrey.  "How  to  Praj."  ch.  10,  5. 


108  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PKAYEE 

nature  of  the  particular  selves  into  which  conscious- 
ness has  divided  may  differ.  Before  the  prayer, 
various  conflicting  tendencies  interfered  with  each 
other.  Thus  when,  as  Torrey  notes  "one  is  partic- 
ularly busy",  or  when  one  is  especially  puzzled, 
the  interference  of  differing  tendencies  makes  ef- 
fective action  very  difficult.  The  religious  person 
desires  "in  place  of  clashing  passions,  one  supreme 
passion",  and  he  obtains  it,  at  least  for  the  time  of 
the  prayer  and  immediately  following.  The  uni- 
fying of  aim  resulting  from  this,  and  the  better  or- 
ganization of  all  work  and  problems  in  the  light  of 
a  controlling  purpose,  contribute  to  greater  efficiency 
and  bring  about  "the  manifestation  of  unusual 
]iower  to  accomplish  ends". 

Moreover,  if  the  prayer  be  of  the  type  which 
serves  to  relieve  the  individual  of  some  of  the  press- 
ing weight  of  responsibility,  and  there  are  few 
prayers,  even  of  those  most  definitely  employed  to 
obtain  increased  strength  for  the  struggle,  which  do 
not  have  in  them  some  element  of  "casting  the  bur- 
den on  the  Lord"  and  removing  the  too  intense 
strain  from  the  individual  at  least  for  the  moment, 
— if  the  prayer  have  in  it  this  element,  there  is  yet 
a  further  way  in  which  it  may  make  accomplish- 
ment easy.  There  are  many  things,  as  we  noticed 
in  connection  with  the  spsthetic  type  of  prayer, 
which  can  be  accomplished  better  by  giving  up  the 
strain  of  conscious  choosing  and  allowing  the  sub- 
conscious and  habitual   activities  to  work  out  the 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF    PRAYER  100 

end  unhampered  by  the  efforts  of  tlie  mind,  whioh 
only  sei-ve  to  confuse  action.  Aside,  then,  from  the 
indirect  effect  which  nraver  maY  have  throuali  the 
growth  of  the  individual's  confidence  in  himself  be- 
cause of  his  belief  in  another's  confidence  for  him, 
])rayer  may  give  greater  eflficieucy  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  moral  ends  in  two  ways :  first  by  the  reor- 
ganization of  the  conflicting  aims  of  consciousness  in 
accordance  with  the  highest  moral  ideal,  and  second 
through  the  additional  ease  of  action  which  comes 
from  giving  up  tlie  worry  of  consul ons  stri\dng  and 
relying  on  the  hal)itual  life-activities  to  carry  out 
tlie  course  in  which  they  have  once  been  started. 

Prayer  of  this  type  is  then,  to  repeat,  a  social 
relationshi})  between  two  selves  arising  in  conscious- 
ness. And  the  end  attained  is  a  wider,  more  efficient, 
more  truly  ethical  self.  In  contrast  to  the  quota- 
tion given  at  the  end  of  the  last  section  in  illustra- 
tion of  the  {esthetic  ty])e  of  prayer,  we  might  de- 
scribe this  use  of  prayer  in  the  words  of  Vance  :^ 
"What  is  a  man's  God  but  his  faultless  and  insi)ii-- 
ing  ideal?  What  is  religious  as])iration  but  the  cry 
of  the  soul  for  life's  com])leteness?  AVill  there  ever 
come  a  time  when  there  are  no  higher  heights  for 
the  soul  to  climb?  If  not,  Ood  abides  as  the  lofty 
and  inspiring  goal  of  the  soul's  eternal  (piest." 


'  Vanco.  "The  Rise  of  a  Soul."  p.  L'37. 


110  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PKAYER 

VII 

THE  TYPE  OF  REALITY  AND  THE  OBJECTIVE  REFERENCE 

INVOLVED  IN  PRAYER 

Three  questions  remain  in  our  consideration  of 
the  subject  of  prayer.  What  type  of  reality  can 
we  posit,  psychologically  speaking,  for  the  selves 
engaged  in  this  relation!  Second,  what  psycholog- 
ical warrant  have  we  for  any  objective  reference? 
Third,  in  case  we  find  some  kind  of  objective  ref- 
erence, what  content  can  be  given  to  the  object? 

Taking  up  the  first  of  these  questions,  "the  per- 
sonal idea  is",  as  we  have  maintained  all  along, 
"the  immediate  social  reality".  "Society,  in  its 
immediate  aspect,  is  a  relation  between  personal 
ideas."  "Corporeal  reality  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  reality  of  the  personal  idea."^  There  is  no 
separation,  as  far  as  personal  ideas  go,  between 
real  and  imaginary  people.  All  are  imaginative 
interpretations  of  certain  parts  or  aspects  of  ex- 
perience which  we  succeed  in  organizing  into  one 
concrete  whole  for  the  purposes  of  a  given  prob- 
lem. Both  the  alter  and  the  me  possess  this  type  of 
reality,— that  of  an  imaginative  organization  of  cer- 
tain phases  of  consciousness  for  the  purpose  of 
the  ongoing  of  that  consciousness. 

Moreover,  the  alter  is  an  organization  of  content 
not  included  in  the  me.  Thus  when  the  statement 
is  made,  as  it  often  is,  that  there  is  no  assurance  of 


'  Cooley,  p.  57. 


PSYCHOLOGY    OF   PRAYER  111 

any  result  in  prayer  beyond  that  arising  in  the  in- 
dividual liimself;  that,  in  other  words,  "God" 
makes  no  contribution  that  can  be  scientifically 
kno^vni, — the  statement  is  inadequate.  It  is  true  in 
one  sense  and  in  another  sense  not.  From  outside 
the  total  process  of  experience  there  is  indeed  no 
proof  that  anything  enters.  Nevertheless,  on  retro- 
s]iect,  we  see  from  the  psychological  analysis  that 
the  process  itself  consisted  of  two  selves,  each  of 
which  made  a  contribution  to  the  final  result. 
Prayer  existed  as  a  real  communication  between 
them.  Tt  is  not  as  though  there  were  one  self, 
which  had  the  consciousness,  which  contained  with- 
in itself  the  entire  process.  In  this  case  it  would 
be  necessary  to  place  any  other  self  outside  the 
process  and  then  to  inquire  whether  the  process 
gave  any  sure  sign  of  the  existence  of  that  other 
self.  This  it  would  clearly  be  impossible  to  obtain; 
from  the  time  of  Kant  it  has  been  recognized  that 
the  ])rocess  of  experiencing  must  find  its  criteria 
within  itself.  So  if  we  posit  first  a  self  which  Jias 
this  process  of  experience, — a  tendency  from  which 
few  even  of  the  newer  psychologists  have  altogether 
escaped, — it  is,  of  course,  necessary  to  state  that 
this  process  gives  no  sure  knowledge  of  any  other 
self.  But  if  the  self  is,  as  we  have  said  before, 
itself  a  construct  in  experience,  the  alter  has,  from 
the  standpoint  of  that  experience,  the  same  kind  of 
reality  as  has  the  me,  namely,  a  "social"  reality. 
In  one  sense,  of  course,  the  only  self  which  can 


112  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    PRAYER 

be  said  to  be  real  is  the  final  self  which  arises  out 
of  the  conflict,  since  that  alone  becomes  "realized" 
by  taking  part  in  the  construction  of  the  world.  Yet 
this  is  a  matter  of  emphasis,  for,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  self  becomes  again  the  starting  point  of  a  new 
problem,  a  new  "problematic"  self,  and  out  of  the 
new  conflict  arises  still  another  "realized"  self. 
But  both  the  me  and  the  alter  have  the  type  of  real- 
ity which  belongs  to  the  stage  preceding  the  con- 
structing stage  of  experience.  Both  contribute  to 
the  final  result,  which  is  a  self  expressed  in  act.  The 
self  wliich  finally  issues  has  not  existed  throughout, 
deliberately  choosing  to  be  influenced  by  certain 
ideas  of  its  own;  it  has  only  arisen  out  of  the  re- 
lation of  those  personal  ideas  and  has  become  real- 
ized as  actual  only  through  them.  This  is  the  com- 
mon function  of  both  the  me  and  the  alter. 

The  me  and  the  alter  do,  however,  differ  in  one 
vital  respect.  As  we  have  seen,  when  consciousness 
arises  as  the  result  of  a  tension,  a  distinction  be- 
tween subject  and  object,  which  has  hitherto  not 
existed,  also  arises.  This  distinction  is  between 
some  form  of  purposeful  activity  and  the  means 
through  which  that  activity  must  reach  its  end.  The 
conditioning  means  is  the  "object"  for  conscious- 
ness. That  this  is  the  typical  form  of  all  objective 
reference  has  been  shown  by  Stuart  in  his  paper  in 
Dewey's  "Studies  in  Logical  Theory".  And  this 
is  also  the  type  of  objective  reference  which  is  given 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  113 

the  alter  in  the  prayer  relation — that  of  necessary 
means  to  an  end.  The  criterion  of  that  objective 
reference  is  the  same  as  in  all  other  cases:  does  the 
means  actually  produce  the  end  for  which  it 
was  employed  ?  We  have  seen  that  in  many  of  the 
cases  of  prayer  of  which  we  have  been  treating 
the  means  did  produce  the  end.  Some  reality  must 
then  be  posited,  objective  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
posit  anything  as  objective,  in  that  it  is  outside  the 
self  of  immediate  purpose.  This  does  not  neces- 
sarily mean  that  it  is  outside  of  the  subconscious 
activities  connected  with  that  self  of  immediate  pur- 
pose; in  fact,  a  connection  of  some  sort  with  the 
purposing  self  must  inevitably  be  assumed;  but  it 
does  assert,  for  the  particular  moment  of  experi- 
ence of  which  we  are  speaking,  the  same  essential 
type  of  psychological  fact  to  which  we  give  objec- 
tive reference  under  any  circumstances.  An 
"object",  as  psychological  fact,  is  a  conditioning 
means  in  the  fulfilment  of  a  purpose,  which  purpose 
is  always  given  a  subjective  reference. 

But  we  have  seen  that  the  alters  in  the  various 
l)rayer  relations  are  not  always  the  same  alter; 
that,  in  fact,  the  alter  is,  strictly  speaking,  a  dif- 
ferent one  for  every  particular  relation.  So  alsp  do 
other  "objects"  differ  for  every  problem  in  which 
they  are  used  as  means.  The  poet  who  says  "1 
have  the  same  blue  skv  as  God,  I  have  the  same  God 


114  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER 

as  the  saint 'V  was  equally  wrong  in  both  of  his 
assertions. 

So  we  come  to  our  final  question:  just  what  con- 
tent and  how  much  coherence  and  unity  can  we 
assert  of  the  alter.  And  this  depends  on  the  amount 
of  organization  which  we  are  able  to  make  in  con- 
sciousness. At  first  the  alter  is  disorganized;  so  is 
the  me.  With  further  organization  there  may  be 
some  connection  maintained  between  the  alter,  con- 
fidence in  which  cures  disease,  and  the  alter  to  which 
recourse  is  had  for  moral  evaluations.  If  so,  the 
term  "God"  will  probably  be  used  to  include  both 
realities;  if  not,  the  two  realities  will  be  treated  as 
fundamentally  different  and  designated  as  different 
gods,  or  else  ascribed,  one  to  science,  the  other  to 
religion. 

Thus,  in  a  real  sense,  God  is  becoming  progres- 
sively more  organized  by  the  process  of  conscious- 
ness even  as  the  individual  me  is.  The  end  which  a 
philosophical  soul  usually  desires  most  ardently  is  a 
complete  organization  which  shall  make  unity  of  the 
widest,  most  infinite  variety.  This  unity  once  at- 
tained can  be  called  God,  the  universe,  or  any  other 
name  desired.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  would 
include  the  me's  as  well  as  the  alters  and  would 
throw  us  back  upon   the   same  problem. 

Any  final  solution  cannot,  of  course,  be  attained 
through  a  psychological  consideration.    What  is  the 


^  Frederic    R.    Torrence,    in    "American    Anthology,"    compiled    by 
Ciai'ence  Stedman,  p.  753. 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PRAYER  H.j 

nature  of  this  ''consciousness"  in  wliicli  the  self 
as  we  know  it  arises?  What  is  the  sio-nificauce  of 
this  continually  changing  reUition  between  a  me  and 
an  alter, — this  process  by  which  consciousness  goes 
on?  These  are  problems  for  metaphysics.  I)ii1  in 
their  consideration  one  very  important  factor  must 
be  psychological  data  of  the  type  we  have  been 
considering,  data  so  com])lexly  social  in  character 
that  they  would  seem  to  indicate  the  futility  of  any 
easy-going  mechanical  attempt  at  ultimate  solution. 
So  much  at  least  we  would  seem  to  have  discovered: 
that  both  the  me  and  the  alter  are  real  as  having  a 
part  in  the  final  result;  that  both  of  them,  while 
vannng  in  different  situations,  may  be  unified  and 
called  ''one"  to  as  great  an  extent  as  connection 
and  association  can  be  established  and  maintained 
for  experience.  This  organizing  and  reorganizing 
is  constantly  going  on  and  the  limits  of  me  and  al- 
ter are  constantly  shifting.  Yet  since  both  originate 
in  consciousness,  and  since  consciousness,  whether 
essentially  unified  or  not,  at  least  furnishes  material 
for  continual  attempts  at  unifying,  we  seem  justi- 
fied in  the  statement  thnt  some  sort  of  dynamic  unity 
can  be  maintained  in  the  alter  as  in  the  me. 


116  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PKAYEE 


A  SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Books  of  general  reference  for  the  standpoint  of  Social  Psychology 
in   its  application   to   the  study  of  religion: 

Baldwin.  James  Mark.  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  of  Men- 
tal Development,  New  York,  1897. 

Cooley.  Cliarle^  Horlon.  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order. 
New  York.  1902. 

Wundt,   Wilhelm   M.      Volkerpsychologie,   vol.   ii.   Leipsic,   1900. 

Coe.  George  A.  The  Sitiritual  Life.  New  York.  1900.  Education 
in  Religion  and  Morals.  Chicago,  1904.  The  Religion  of  a  Mature 
Mind.  Chicago.  1902. 

King.  Henry  Churchill.  Tlieology  and  the  Social  Consciousness. 
New  York,   1902.     Rational   Living.  New   York.   1905. 

Jones.  Rufus  M.  Social  Law  in  the  Spiritual  World.  Philadel- 
phia. 1904. 

Books  and  articles  dealing  vnth  the  psychology  of  religion,  with 
especial  reference  to  prayer: 

Beck.  Frank  O.  Prayer.  A  Study  of  Its  History  and  Psychology. 
American  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology  and  Education,  ii.  1906. 
107-121. 

Colvin.  S.  S.  The  Psychological  Necessity  of  Religion.  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  xiii.  1902,  80-S7. 

Farnell.  L.  R.  The  Evolution  of  Religion.  New  Y'ork  and  Lon- 
don. 1905. 

Flournoy.  Theodore.  Oliservations  dp  la  Psychologie  Religieuse. 
Archives    dc    Psychologic,    ii.    1903.    327-366. 

Guimaraeu'*.  Da  Costa.  Le  Besoin  de  Prier.  Revue  Philosophique. 
liv.  1902.  391-412. 

Hall.  G.  Stanley.  .Vdoloscence.  esp.  vol.  2.  pp.  281-363.  New  York. 
1904.  Address  on  the  Religious  Content  of  the  Child-Mind,  in  Prin- 
ciples of  Religious  Education.  New  York.  1900. 

.Tames.  William.  The  Vnrieties  of  Religious  Experience.  London. 
1903. 

King.  IrxJng.  The  Differentiation  of  the  Religious  Consciousness. 
Psyeholngical   Review.    Monograph    Supplements   Yo.   .?7. 

Leuba.  James  H.  Introduction  to  a  Psychological  Study  of  Re- 
ligion. Monist.  xi.  195-225.  Contents  of  the  Religious  Conscious- 
ness. Monisf.  xi.  .536-573.  Religion.  Its  Impulses  and  Its  Ends. 
Bihliotheca  Sacra.  Iviii.  757-769.  The  Field  and  Problems  of  the 
Psychology   of    Religion.      Amer.   Jour,    of  Rel.   Psych,    and  Edu.,   i. 


PbYCHOLOGY    OF    PKAYER  117 

lan-lHT.  Rolijrion  as  a  Factor  in  tlip  Struggle  for  Life.  Amer. 
■four,  of  Rcl.   Pfiych.   and  Edu..   ii.  307-343. 

Marett.     From  Si>ell  to  Prayor.     Folk-Lore,  xv.   I'.HM.   la^-KJ"). 

MtirisjiM-,  Ernst.  T.es  .M:il.i'li<'s  dii  StMitiniciit  Kiliiiii-iix.  raris. 
1!M)1. 

Perry.     'Plic   Rfliiiioiis   Experience.     Monint,    xiv,   7o2-7(ifi. 

Pratt.  Jaiue.s  Bissell.  Tlio  Psycholofiy  of  Religious  Belief.  New 
York.    in07. 

Ranson,  S.  W.  Studies  in  tlie  Psycholog;y  of  Prayer.  Amer.  lour, 
of  Ifel.   Ps^iirU.   nud  Edu..   i.    1004.   120-142. 

Srarbiick.     Tin-  Psychology  of  Religion.  London.  1003. 

Woolston.  H.  B.  The  Religions  Emotion.  Avicr.  Jour,  of  I'.'^yrli.. 
xiii.   1002,  62-79. 

Certain  of  the  more  prominent  sourre-bookn  of  prayers  and  devo- 
tional literature,  ineluding  eertain  ti/pieal  manuals  of  prayer  and  de- 
votion referred  to  in  this  thesis: 

The  Bible. 

The  Koran. 

The  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

Tileston.  ^fary  W.  Prayers  Ancient  and  Modern.  Boston.  1906. 
(Also  for   a   bibliograi)hy  of  source-books.) 

M.ix  Miillor.  F.  Sacred  Literature  of  the  East.  esp.  vols,  xxxii. 
xlvi.     Vedic  Hymns.  Oxford.  1879-1894. 

Griffith.  Ralph.     Hymns  of  the-  Rigveda,  Benares.  1889. 

Aufrustiue.     Confessions.   "'A    Revised   Translation."   London.    1SS6. 

Bunyan.  .John.  Grace  .\bonndinc:  to  the  Chief  of  Sinners,  1st 
Hudson   edition.   Hudson.   190.'). 

Eddy.   Mary    Baker  G.     Science   and    Health.   Baston.    1897. 

Dresser.  Horatio  W.  Health  and  the  Inner  Life,  New  York  and 
London.  l007.  Mnn  and  the  Divine  Order.  New  York  and  London. 
1003. 

Fenelon.  1.,'^rters  to  Men.  trails,  hv  Sidney  Lear,  London.  New 
York  and  Bombay.  lOaS. 

Finney.  Charles  Grandison.     .Kufobinu'raphy.   New  York.   1876. 

Fox.   George.     .Tournal.   Philadelphia.   ISOO. 

Granger.  Frank.     The  Soul  of  a  Christian.  London.  1900. 

Herrmann.  Wilhelm.  The  Communion  of  the  Christian  with  God. 
trans,  by  .J.   S.   Stanyon.   New   York.   London.   UMX'i. 

i\  Kenii)is.  Thomas.  I'lmitation  de  Jesus-Christ,  trans,  by  Fabre, 
Paris.    1006. 

Matheson.  George.  Times  of  Retirement.  New  York.  Chicago,  To- 
ronto. 1901. 


118  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PEAYEE 

MurraA,  Andrew.  With  Christ,  New  York,  Chicago,  Toronto. 
181*5. 

The  Life  of  Trust ;  Being  a  Narrative  of  the  Lord's  Dealings  with 
George   Miiller.    New    Amer.    Edi.,    New   Yorli,    1898. 

Religion  and  Medicine.  Publications  of  the  Emmanuel  Church, 
Boston.   1908. 

Sergieff.  Father  John  Iliytch.  My  Life  in  Christ,  trans,  by  E.  E. 
Goulaeff,  London,  Paris.  Melbourne,  1897. 

St.  Teresa.  The  Way  of  Perfection,  trans,  by  John  Dalton,  Lon- 
don, 1901.     Autobiography,  trans,  by  David  Lewis,  London,  1904. 

Torrey,  R.  A.     How  to  Pray.  New  York,  Chicago,  Toronto,  1900. 

Trine,  R.  W.     In  Tune  with  the  Infinite,  New  York,  1899. 

Vance,  James.     The  Rise  of  a  Soul,  New  York,  1902. 

Upham,  T.  C.  Life  and  Religious  Experiences  of  Madame  de  la 
Mothe  Guyon,  New  York.  1877. 


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